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FROM THE LIBRARY 
OF 
JACK SAMS 









“A book, through whose windows one looks out upon the 
scenes of the Delectable Mountains’’ 





Horizons of Immortality 


By F. D. KERSHNER 
Dean of Religion, Butler University 





There has long been need of such a book as ‘‘Hori- 
zons of Immortality,’’ a book that shows the methods 
| and conclusions about immortality reached through 
modern learning, together with a fresh view of Biblical 
teaching, written in a way that would satisfy both the 
scholar and the everyday practical reader. Dr. 
Kershner has achieved this difficult literary feat be- 
cause of his training and scholarship and because of 
the close touch he has ever had with all the people. 
He writes with ease and mastery, and the reader is 
borne along as on the bosom of a strong, calm river, 
with the sense of power in the book, and kept eager by 
the lights which burn beyond life’s far and near 
horizons. 


| - 
BF BETHANY PRESS - - - - ~~ <St. Louis 





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HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
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https://archive.org/details/horizonsofimmort0Okers_0 


HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


THE CHRISTIAN BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY IN THE 
LIGHT OF MODERN THOUGHT 


a 


Pe 
iS 


BY 
FREDERICK D. KERSHNER 


Dean of Religion, Butler College 
cAuthor, “The Christian Union Overture,” “Christian Baptism,” 
“Sermons for Special “Days,” etc., ete. 


THE BETHANY PRESS 
ST. LOUIS, MO, 


Copyright, 1926 
The Bethany Press 
St. Louis, Mo. 


cAd Majorem Christi Gloriam 
et 


In Memoriam 


te Re LEON ce 


Quae 
In Spe “Uitae Aeternae 


Dormivit 26 February, 1926 


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INTRODUCTION 


Dean Isershner has strengthened and enriched 
the faith of the church with a number of books, 
but Horizons of Immortality will take the first 
place among them. It deals with the subject 
deepest in the human heart. Man thinks he was 
not made to die. He does not want to ‘‘he in the 
grave even though he may have princes for bed- 
fellows.’’ About him ever hovers the passion for 
immortality no matter how completely he at times 
may seem to lose this surest marking of his genuine 
dignity and eternal worth. 


This book traces that elemental conviction of 
humanity through dream, history, philosophy, 
science, literature, and reaches a convincing climax 
in divine revelation as it shines forth in the teach- 
ings of Jesus and his apostles. 

It is a book of optimism. For I suppose Chris- 
tian belief in immortality to be the essence of hope. 
It is the expectation of life growing from the idea 
that human personality is indestructible and that 
the goal of all good longings will be finally reached 
by those who seek them even though through rough 
and devious paths. 

The book is scholarly and in that sense a book 
for the classroom and for the deepest thinker, but 
it is written with the ease and charm of simplicity 
that will take hold of the plainest reader and be 


~ 


i 


§ INTRODUCTION 


a source of comfort and instruction to those who 
seek to glimpse the stars through cypress trees. 
It has many Pisgah sights and ‘‘little flights of 
song’’ that lift the soul to the gates ajar. 


But it is not a book of rapture, even though it 
has warmth and glow. It is based on fact, forged 
out with logic and has the weight and power that 
make it of permanent worth. 

It is a valuable contribution to the growing 
volume of literature on immortality, the glow of 
the after life burning along the horizons of time 
to keep us from wasting all the precious energies 
of the soul in the drab and sordid business of 
plying the muck rake instead of standing up with 
radiant face to receive the crown. 


B. A. ABBOTT. 


CONTENTS 


PART I—HISTORICAL SURVEY 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 
. Immortality and the Teaching of Jesus 13 
. Immortality and the Teaching of Paul 27 
. The Greek Conception of Immortality 36 
. Greek Thought and Immortality______ 46 
. Immortality and the Creeds_________-_ 56 
. Modern Philosophy and Immortality__ 66 


. Modern Science and Immortality_____ 78 


. The Proofs from Psychical Research__ 87 
. Theosophy and the Doctrine of Karma 97 
. Evolution and Immortality__________- 107 
. The Surrender of Immortality_______- 117 
. Summary. and Conclusion-L--- 126 


PART II—CONSTRUCTIVE SUGGESTIONS 


XITTI. 
XIV. 
XV. 
XVI. 
XVII. 


Riayat SOT te eed eee = Pee 137 
LCGEWG A Eee BT AG C8 Robe a a sae ea feN Wont asia c eek 151 
The Testimony of the Seers__-------- 159 
The Testimony of the Saints__------- 185 
The Gospel of the Resurrection__-~-- 196 


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HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 
PART J. PROBLEMS 


To die,—to sleep,— 
To sleep! perchance to dream! 


TE HE immortality of the soul is a thing 
so important that only those who have 
lost all feeling can rest indifferent to it, can 
be content to know if it is not, or if it is. 
—Pascal 


CHAPTER 1 


IMMORTALITY AND THE TEACHING OF 
JESUS 


YOF TOLSTOI, whose enthusiasm for the 
ethical message of Jesus stands unrivalled in 

our modern age, refuses to accept the orthodox 
Christian doctrine of immortality. From his point 
of view, to possess eternal life can only mean the 
complete surrender of individuality in the univer- 


sal life of God. He says: 


As opposed to the personal life, Christ taught us, not of a life 
beyond the grave, but of a universal life united with the life of 
humanity, past, present, and to come, the life of the Son of Man. 


A little later in the book from which the above 
quotation is taken, he appears to hedge somewhat 
with regard to personal immortality. Whether we 
live as conscious individuals after physical dissolu- 
tion, or whether we do not makes no difference, 
in his opinion, with regard to the true meaning and 
value of Christ’s teaching. To quote further: 


But let us grant that Christ’s words concerning the last judg- 
ment and the consummation of the age, and other words reported 
in the Gospel of John, are a promise of a life beyond the grave for 
the souls of mortal men,—it is none the less true that His teaching 
in regard to the light of life and the Kingdom of God have the 
same meaning for us that they had for his hearers eighteen cen- 


13 


14 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


turies ago, that is, that the only real life is the life of the Son of 
Man according to the Father’s will. 

It is easier to admit this than to admit that the doctrine of the 
true life contains the conception of immortality and a life beyond 
the grave. 

Perhaps it is fairer to presuppose that man, after this terrestrial 
life passed in the satisfaction of personal desires, will enter upon 
the possession of an eternal personal life in paradise, with all imag- 
inable enjoyments; perhaps this is fairer, but to believe that this is 
so, to endeavor to persuade ourselves that for our good actions we 
shall be recompensed with eternal felicity, and for our bad actions 
punished with eternal torments,—to believe this, does not aid us in 
understanding Christ’s teaching, but, on the contrary, deprives 
Christ’s teaching of its chief foundation. 


In Tolstoi’s abbreviation of the New Testament 
story of Christ entitled The Gospel in Brief, 
he omits all reference to the Resurrection and as 
far as possible to any idea of individual immortal- 
ity. Likewise, in his brief essay entitled Life, 
he emphasizes his doctrine of the absorption of in- 
dividual consciousness in the divine Personality. 
We do not have space to quote the numerous pas- 
sages in this work bearing upon the subject, but 
anyone who will take the trouble to consult it can- 
not fail to be impressed by the thoroughgoing 
manner in which the author accepts and defends 
his hypothesis. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson is apparently dubious 
concerning Jesus’ advocacy of personal survival. 
In a well-known passage he says: | 


It is strange that Jesus is esteemed by mankind the bringer of 
the doctrine of immortality. He is never weak or sentimental, He 


IMMORTALITY AND THE TEACHING OF JESUS 1d 


is very abstemious of explanation. He never preaches the personal 
immortality. 


It would be easy to add the names of other au- 
thorities who deprecate the idea that Jesus em- 
phasized the continuance of conscious personal life 
beyond the grave. There is a tendency nowadays 
to draw a rather sharp line of cleavage between 
the social and eschatological aspects of the New 
Testament and to claim the authority of Jesus only 
for the former of the two. Paul and the later 
apocalyptie writers, we are told, were responsible 
for the development of the doctrine of immortality 
with its consequent emphasis upon other-world- 
liness, while Jesus himself was concerned solely 
with the social content of his message concerning 
the Kingdom. ‘That there is a certain degree of 
truth in this point of view will hardly be denied 
by any careful student of the New Testament. 
Nevertheless, there is much in the theory which 
runs counter not only to the plain teachings of the 
gospel writers themselves, but also to the obvious 
implications of Christian history and development. 
Beyond any question, the teaching of Jesus has 
often received a mistaken interpretation because 
of undue emphasis upon its eschatological and 
other-worldly features. Moreover, there can be no 
doubt but that the social message of the Nazarene 
for many centuries was neglected. And yet one 
ean searcely believe that the universal testimony 


16 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


of orthodox Christendom with regard to the im- 
mortality of the soul was based upon a delusion. 
Doubtless the Church has frequently misunder- 
stood and misinterpreted her Founder’s teaching, 
but it seems inconceivable that she should have 
gone so far astray as the supposition in question 
would involve. Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant 
authorities alike agree that personal immortality 
is a presupposition of the Christian faith. The 
Tolstoian interpretation is Buddhistic or Brah- 
manistic, but is not Christian. There are, in fact, 
a good many points of affinity between the views 
of the great Russian and the religion of Gautama. 
It is not without significance that Gandhi, the 
prophet of modern India, avows himself a disciple 
of Tolstoi. Nor is it difficult to enumerate points 
of resemblance between Buddhism and Christian- 
ity. The essential difference lies precisely in the 
Western emphasis upon immortality and the East- 
ern rejection of the doctrine. There are of course 
certain divergences between the Christian and the 
Buddhist systems of ethics, but they are insignif- 
icant when compared with the cleavage we have 
just indicated. 

When we turn to the New Testament itself in 
order to discover what Jesus taught concerning 
the life beyond the grave, we are confronted with 
a somewhat anomalous situation. Scarcely any- 
one can read the gospels without being conscious 
of the atmosphere of immortality which pervades 


IMMORTALITY AND THE TEACHING OF JESUS 17 


them. The tremendous emphasis upon the signif- 
icance and value of the individual soul leads one 
to believe that a being of such worth cannot pass 
into nothingness after a few short years upon 
earth. One feels irresistibly that the whole mis- 
sion of Jesus presupposes the continuance of per- 
sonal existence beyond the grave. Robert Brown- 
ing, when he draws the distinction between the 
spirit of pagan art and the new art of Christianity, 
rightly places the emphasis upon the Christian 
doctrine of immortality. Perhaps his most famous 
art poem, Old Pictures in Florence, contains this 
idea as its kernel: 


Growth came when, looking your last on them all, 
You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day 

And cried with a start—What if we so small 
Be greater and grander the while than they! 

Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature? 
In both, of such lower types are we 

Precisely because of our wider nature; 

For time, theirs—ours for eternity. 


In fact, one can with difficulty imagine what 
modern Christianity would become with the doc- 
trine of personal immortality left out. There is 
no other belief so completely interwoven with the 
whole fabric of Christian history and experience. 
The most significant dogmas of the faith such as 
the doctrines of the Incarnation, the Atonement, 
the Trinity and others of like importance are 
scarcely so universal in the acceptance which they 


18 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


have received on the part of men and women who 
have claimed to be Christians throughout the cen- 
turies as is the doctrine of immortality. If Chris- 
tendom went astray at this particular point, the 
divergence was assuredly complete and universal. 


The synoptic writings contain much evidence 
which leads to the orthodox interpretation. Aside 
from the accounts of the Resurrection, which 
Tolstoi of course rejects, there are numerous pas- 
sages in the narrative which can scarcely be inter- 
preted in any other way than as involving the ac- 
ceptance of personal immortality. Such passages, 
among others, are the parable of the Judgment as 
found in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, the 
numerous references to future consequences of 
present acts which obviously cannot be limited to 
the round of earthly experience and the straight- 
out affirmation of the doctrine in the reply of Jesus 
to the question of the Sadducees concerning the 
Resurrection. There is moreover the parable of 
the Rich Man and Lazarus, which even Tolstoi ac- 
cepts, and sundry passages scattered through the 
Sermon on the Mount and in other unexpected 
places which require much explaining away in 
order to escape the implication of survival. It 
would be tedious to recapitulate these references 
inasmuch as they have become household words 
to all of us. Doubtless in some instances, perhaps 
in most of them, we have read into the text the 


IMMORTALITY AND THE TEACHING OF JESUS 19 


theological coloring of many centuries of Christian 
history, and yet when every allowance is made 
there remains a residuum which ean only be elimi- 
nated by the frank rejection of the text itself. 


While the above considerations must be taken 
into account in any fair estimate of the situation, 
it is only just to say that some arguments can be 
made for the Tolstoian theory. Personal im- 
mortality is stressed in the teaching of Jesus, but 
certainly far less than was true later in the history 
of the church. Paul says much more about it than 
does Jesus himself, and the theologians of the 
second and third centuries were more emphatic and 
pronounced in its advocacy than were any of the 
apostohe order. It seems strange at first sight 
that this later development should have proceeded 
from the foundation which we discover in the di- 
rect teachings of Jesus. Obviously, we must seek 
an explanation for the evolution of the doctrine 
outside of the gospel sources themselves. We be- 
lieve, however, that it is quite possible to discover 
the reason or reasons for the resultant situation 
from a simple analysis of the facts. 

As we shall see later, the influence of Platonism 
and of Greek philosophy in general meant much 
in the development of the Christian dogma of im- 
mortality. The measure of this influence in the 
course of Christian development is difficult to de- 
termine, but it was unquestionably both extensive 


20 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


and profound. No analysis of Christian doctrine 
would be adequate without due allowance for the 
Greek thread which runs through the entire his- 
tory of theology. Nevertheless, when this allow- 
ance has been made, it appears impossible to derive 
the remaining content of the Christian concept of 
immortality from the slender foundation which 
writers like Tolstoi and Emerson would afford us. 
It is inconceivable that Origen and Athanasius and 
Augustine and Anselm and all the rest of the 
galaxy of Christian theologians derived their con- 
viction of the future life from Plato alone. As- 
suredly they believed the doctrine to be taught and 
taught unreservedly in the New Testament. It was 
to them an essential part of the Gospel. They 
never doubted that Jesus himself taught it, be- 
lieved it, lived it. Of course they may have been 
mistaken about this as about other things, but the 
universal and unanimous testimony of their Chris- 
tian experience must, we think, be allowed to pos- 
sess evidential value. 

The explanation of the entire matter, as we see 
it, is based upon the definition of eternal life as the 
term is used in the New Testament. Jesus con- 
stantly refers to the fact that He is the bearer 
of hfe and that His mission is to reveal life and 
immortality through the gospel. Perhaps this 
point of view is brought out more fully in the 
Gospel of John than it is in the Synopties, but it is 


IMMORTALITY AND THE TEACHING OF JESUS 21 


present in all of the biographies of the Nazarene. 
John uses the expression, ‘‘eternal life’’ about 
seventeen times in the gospel and some six times 
in the epistles. It is worth recalling some of the 
passages in which this expression occurs. In the 
discourse upon the Bread of Life, Jesus says, ‘‘He 
that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath 
eternal life.’’ Again, in the account of the resur- 
rection of Lazarus, we have this statement: 
‘‘ Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and 
the life: he that believeth on me, though he were 
dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and 
believeth in me shall never die.’’ In the great In- 
tercessory Prayer, we have the term defined: 
‘*This is life eternal, that they should know thee 
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou 
hast sent.’’ At the conclusion of the parable of 
the Good Shepherd, Jesus sums up his mission in 
the famous passage: ‘‘I am come that they might 
have life, and that they might have it more 
abundantly.’’ 


The meaning involved in all these passages is 
quite obviously that eternal life is not simply some- 
thing which comes after death, but that it is an im- 
mediate and present possession of those who be- 
come the followers of Jesus. As Harnack puts it, 
the gospel means in its essence, ‘‘eternal life in 
the midst of time by the strength and under the 
eyes of God.’’ Jesus does not say much about the 


2? HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


future life because to him it is identical with the 
present life. As Pringle-Pattison expresses it, 


Eternal life is not a state of existence to follow upon physical 
death, but an all-satisfying present experience of the love of God 
in Christ. It is, as the theologians say, participation in the being 
of the spiritual Christ! This is the eternal life in the midst of 
time which is claimed by the saints as an immediate experience, 
one to which considerations of time are, in fact, indifferent, because 
we are at rest in the present. 


It may be said that the Buddhistic interpretation 
of absorption in Nirvana accepted by Tolstoi can 
still be made to fit into the above passages. Tolstoi 
himself quotes some of them in support of his 
theory, and yet to the writer at least, it seems 1m- 
possible to draw such a meaning from any fair 
exegesis of the language, considered as a whole. 
Certainly those who heard these words did not 
understand them in a Buddhistic sense any more 
than the later church theologians so understood 
them. When Jesus spoke of the more abundant 
life, it is inconceivable that his hearers should 
have understood him to mean the extinction of 
their own conscious personalities. Had they so 
understood him, they could never later have 
preached the gospel of the resurrection. Jt must 
always be remembered that the New Testament 
writers themselves accepted the orthodox exegesis 
of their Master’s words; there appears to be no 
exception to this statement. It was left for much 


IMMORTALITY AND THE TEACHING OF JESUS 23 


later interpreters to derive the gospel of Nirvana 
from the words of Jesus. 


It is obvious that any doctrine of unity with 
Christ and of consequent unity with God carries 
with it the possibility of misinterpretation at this 
point. Doubtless no minister of our modern age 
accepted the orthodox view of immortality more 
thoroughly than George Matheson, and yet it is 
quite possible to read the Tolstoian view into 
Matheson’s most famous poetical production, ‘‘O 
Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.’’ When the poet 
Says: 

I give thee back the life I owe, 


That in thine ocean depths its flow 
May richer, fuller be, 


it is quite easy to draw the conclusion that he 
meant absorption in Nirvana or in the one univer- 
sal Life of the world. [ven the concluding verse 
with its splendid reference to immortality may with 
little effort yield a similar meaning: 


O Cross that liftest up my head, 
I dare not ask to fly from Thee; 

I lay in dust life’s glory dead, 

And from the ground there blossoms red 
Life that shall endless be! 


Now it is quite conceivable that if the facts con- 
cerning the author’s belief in personal immortality 
were unknown, the above words might be inter- 
preted in harmony with the Buddhistice philosophy. 


24 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


The life which is endless and which blossoms red 
from the ground to an Oriental mind might easily 
refer to the universal Being who occupies the first 
place in the Pantheistic interpretation of reality. 
How thoroughly incorrect such an exegesis is, may 
be discovered by referring to the authoritative 
biography of the Scotch minister written by his 
friend, D. Macmillan. The latter says: 


If there was one subject more than another in which Matheson 
was deeply interested, it was immortality. It is the theme of his 
earliest and of his latest writings. There is hardly a book or an 
article written by him in which there is not some reference to it. 
It was with him a subject of perennial interest. Nor was there any 
question to which he had given a more definite answer. He had no 
doubt concerning it. He believed as strongly in the immortality of 
the soul as he did in his own personality. Some may think that the 
reason of his absorbing interest in this subject was the fact of his 
being blind. It was natural that he should look forward to another 
world in which the film would be taken from his eyes and he could 
see the ‘‘King in his beauty.’’ Matheson had formed to himself 
a very vivid conception of what the hereafter was to be like. He 
had created a ‘‘new heaven and a new earth,’’ and in moments of 
frank communication he gave his friends a glimpse of what he him- 
self saw; but his hope of immortality arose from another cause. 
As a spiritually minded man, as a Christian theologian, as one who 
had pondered the problems which face all serious men, he felt that 
there could be no escape from a belief in this great doctrine. The 
very idea of God made it necessary to his thinking, and the Chris- 
tian religion would fall to pieces were the doctrine of immortality 
to be blotted out. 


Matheson’s interpretation of the subject appears 
to the writer to be singularly in harmony with the 
facts. Grounding as he does the whole matter in 


IMMORTALITY AND THE TEACHING OF JESUS 25 


the mystical union of the believer with Christ, he 
nevertheless interprets this union in terms of con- 
scious personal immortality. As Macmillan puts 
it, 

The believer who is mystically united with Christ, who is a mem- 
ber of His divine body, is bound to be a sharer in that life which 
Christ brought to light. The power of Christ in the believing soul 


will make it eternal, and the glorified body of Christ will also be 
shared in by the Christian. 


‘‘When Jesus uses such figures as the Vine 
and the Branches, the Door, the Resurrection and 
the Life, above all when He attaches such mystical 
and vital significance to partaking of His body and 
His blood, we can readily understand the meaning 
of His teaching concerning immortality. Since 
He is the Life, death has no power over Him, and 
those who are His followers because they are par- 
takers of His life must also be delivered from the 
fear and power of death. The true teaching of 
Jesus concerning immortality is mystical and vital 
rather than mechanical. This does not mean, how- 
ever, that it involves the loss of individual con- 
sciousness. Rather does it mean the perfection 
and enriching of our undeveloped earthly per- 
sonalities. The future will not mean less of per- 
sonal self-knowledge to each one of us, but rather 
more. Here we know our own selves only in part, 
there we shall know even as we are known. In 
the Father’s house, there are many rooms and it 


26 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


shall be our privilege and joy to explore these 
rooms throughout eternity. 

The teaching of Jesus concerning personal sur- 
vival after the experience we call death is there- 
fore simple and clear. He looked upon the dis- 
solution of the material body as a matter of such 
slight consequence as to demand only the most 
casual treatment. Those who have entered into 
the true life, the life of the spirit, in the very 
nature of things cannot be subject to the power 
of death. It was a true instinct which led the 
church theologians from the beginning to stress 
the gospel of personal immortality as an essential 
feature of the Master’s teaching. Unfortunately, 
they sometimes interpreted his words in mechan- 
ical and legalistic fashion instead of giving them 
the vital connotation which they deserve. Never- 
theless, their persistent witness to the core of 
Christ’s teaching upon the subject rings truer to 
the facts than the modern attempts to Orientalize 
the message of Jesus in the interest of a new 
philosophical fashion. 


REFERENCES 


. L. Tolstoi, My Religion. Chapter VITI. 

. L. Tolstoi, The Gospel in Brief. Chapter XI. 

. R. W. Emerson. Works. Vol. viii, p. 330. 

. Robert Browning, Old Pictures in Florence. 

. A. Harnack, What Is Christianity? Chapter IT. 

. A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of Immortality. Lecture 


oO cre whe 


X. 
7. D. Maemillan, The Life of George Matheson. Chapter VI. 


CHAPTER II 


IMMORTALITY AND THE TEACHING OF 
PAUL 


AUL is usually regarded as the great protago- 
nist of the orthodox Christian view of im- 
mortality. Perhaps a good deal of this feeling is 
derived from the prominence given to the fifteenth 
chapter of First Corinthians in the burial service 
of practically all Christian communions. ‘The 
language here is so clear and emphatic that there 
is no possibility of misunderstanding it. Even 
Tolsto1 does not try to make out Paul to be a 
Pantheist. Nowhere else in literature is the doc- 
trine of conscious personal survival after death 
asserted more fully and completely than it is in 
this famous passage. 

In view of the considerations noted above, it 
seems rather strange that an authority so eminent 
as Professor George B. Stevens should say con- 
cerning the Pauline theology, ‘‘No part of the 
apostle’s teaching is developed with so little of 
systematic fulness as the doctrine of the future 
life.’’ Professor Stevens concedes, however, that 
upon the subject of individual immortality there 
is no possibility of misunderstanding Paul’s posi- 
tion. He believed in it, preached it, taught it, and 

27 


28 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


transmitted it to his successors and followers. 
There is some question as to whether his conception 
of the resurrection included the wicked as well as 
the righteous, as we shall see later, but of the fact 
that he taught a personal resurrection of the indi- 
vidual Christian there can be no doubt. Paul stakes 
the whole case for Christianity upon the fact of 
Christ’s conquest of death, carrying with it as it 
does the certainty of future life for Christ’s fol- 
lowers. No language could be stronger than words 
like these: ‘‘ But if there is no resurrection of the 
dead, neither hath Christ been raised, and if Christ 
hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, 
your faith also is vain,’’ or these words of still 
more emphatic import: ‘‘For if the dead are not 
raised, neither hath Christ been raised: and if 
Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain, ye 
are yet in your sins. Then they also that are fallen 
asleep in Christ have perished. If we have only 
hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most 
pitiable.’’ 


The Pauline eschatology, like the Pauline theol- 
ogy in general, can best be understood by giving 
due allowance to the educational and philosophical 
background of the apostle. Paul, it should always 
be remembered, was a Pharisee. He had received 
his education under the most eminent teacher of 
this school and the impression produced by his 
early training remained indelibly stamped upon 


IMMORTALITY AND THE TEACHING OF PAUL 29 


his mind. Of course his later Christian experience 
took precedence over the instructions of Gamaliel, 
but there can be little doubt that the latter’s views, 
perhaps for the most part unconsciously, were of 
great significance in the evolution of the Pauline 
theology. To many interpreters, the rigid pre- 
destinarian sections to be found in certain of Paul’s 
epistles are best explained by the fatalistic back- 
ground which his thinking received from his Phari- 
see teachers. In like manner, his views of the 
future life were undoubtedly colored by the in- 
struction he had received in his youth. It was one 
of the cardinal tenets of the Pharisees that the soul 
is immortal, their teaching upon the subject har- 
monizing in no slight degree with the Platonic 
school of Greek philosophy. According to this 
view, the soul is inherently indestructible and must 
therefore survive the experience of death. The 
Sadducees rejected this view entirely, believing in 
neither angels nor the resurrection. Paul’s ad- 
herence to the current Pharisaical teaching is 
clearly brought out in the twenty-third chapter of 
Acts where, upon the occasion of his trial before 
Ananias, the apostle cried out in the council, 
‘‘Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees: 
touching the hope and resurrection of the dead I 
am called in question.’’ It is inconceivable that 
Paul should have misrepresented his actual views 
upon this occasion simply in order to make a point. 


30 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


That his hearers understood his meaning is clear 
from the fact that a dissension at once arose be- 
tween the Pharisees and the Sadducees who were 
present, the former taking the apostle’s part de- 
spite their antipathy to him as a Christian. A 
little later when Paul defended himself before 
Felix in opposition to the speech of Tertullus, he 
makes it an essential part of hig apology that he 
has ‘‘hope toward God, which these also them- 
selves look for, that there shall be a resurrection 
both of the just and the unjust.’’ Still later, in 
his defense before King Agrippa, Paul asks the 
question, ‘‘ Why is it judged incredible with you, if 
God doth raise the dead?’’ In his speech on Mars 
Hill, some years before, he had closed his discourse 
by saying that God commands all men everywhere 
to repent ‘‘inasmuch as he has appointed a day 
in which he will judge the world in righteousness 
by the man he has ordained, whereof he hath given 
assurance unto all men, in that he has raised him 
from the dead.’’ There is searcely one of the 
Pauline letters which does not contain some refer- 
ence to the general judgment. It is difficult to un- 
derstand the significance of such a judgment un- 
less there is the implication of a general resurrec- 
tion, as the apostle himself said, ‘‘both of the just 
and the unjust.’’ 


Notwithstanding the facts above cited, there are 
many modern theologians who hold to the view that 


IMMORTALITY AND THE TEACHING OF PAUL 3] 


Paul nowhere teaches the resurrection of the un- |. 
just but’ only of those who have become immortal , 
through their mystical union with Christ. While 
somewhat guarded in his statements, this in the 
main is the position held by Professor Stevens. 
He says: 

In regard to the question whether Paul believed in a resurrection 
of the godless, the following points must be remembered,—(a) that 
he nowhere speaks in his epistles (cf., however, Acts 24:15) of a 
general resurrection of all mankind, (b) that he twice (1 Thess. 
4:16, 1 Cor. 15:23) speaks explicitly of a resurrection of Chris- 
tians, as if he thought of it as a distinct event, (c) that his whole 
argument for the fact of a resurrection is based upon Christ’s res- 
urrection as its ground and guaranty, and (d) that the application 
of this argument is made to Christians alone. It is certain that 
Paul has said nothing—even in the most casual or indirect way— 
of a resurrection of non-believers. Whether he held to such a res- 
urrection notwithstanding the fact that he has not alluded to it, or 


whether he has not alluded to it because he did not hold it, is a 
matter for conjecture. 


Elsewhere Stevens tries to break the force of the 
Pauline references to a general judgment by say- 
ing that while they create a certain presumption 
in favor of a universal resurrection ‘‘they do not 
conclusively prove a positive opinion on Paul’s 
part.’’ Professor Simpson, in his recent work en- 
titled, Man and the Attainment of Immortality, 
argues for the same position. His language is much 
stronger than that of Stevens: ‘‘In none of St. 
Paul’s writings,’’ he says, ‘‘is there any sugges- 
tion of a resurrection of the wicked.’’ It is true 


32 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


that he sees traces of the survival of the Pharisa- 
ical eschatology in the Pauline epistles, but he re- 
gards these as insignificant. To use his own lan- 
guage, ‘‘St. Paul evidently kept some of the old 
eschatological pictures of his early days in his 
mind, but our duty in interpretation is to follow 
the main line of his religious experience.’’ He 
gets rid of the reference to the universal res- 
urrection in Acts 24:15 by agreeing with Professor 
Kennedy that in his report of Paul’s speech Luke 
aimed to give as Judaistic a coloring as possible to 
the apostle’s words. Other references to the judg- 
ment are treated in similar fashion. Of course 
Professor Simpson’s object, as we shall see later, 
is to sustain his general theory of ‘‘immortability”’ 
as opposed to the ordinary doctrine of immortality. 


in whatever way we may account for the fact, 
it will scarcely be disputed that Christian theology 
as a whole has understood Paul’s teaching to be 
clearly in favor of a universal resurrection. From 
the days of Augustine onward, there was little 
hesitancy with regard to the matter. Luther, Cal- 
vin, Zwingli, and the Protestant theologians in gen- 
eral were quite as emphatic in regard to the ques- 
tion as were their Roman Catholic predecessors 
and contemporaries. It does not appear to have 
occurred to them that there could be any doubt 
about the apostle’s convictions upon the subject. 
Of course the influence of Greek thought proper 


IMMORTALITY AND THE TEACHING OF PAUL 33 


and of other similar considerations may have had 
something to do with their views. Whatever the 
cause, the fact remains that the Pauline doctrine 
of immortality in their minds coincided clearly 
with the Greek view of the inherent immortality 
of the human soul. 


To the writer at least, the difficulty involved in 
harmonizing the different threads in the Pauline 
eschatology arises chiefly from the fact that the 
apostle himself, as Professor Stevens says, does 
not appear to have organized them into a con- 
sistent system. We find decided traces of the old 
Pharisaical theories along with the conception of 
mystical unity with Christ so constantly empha- 
sized in the gospels. The two things do not har- 
monize precisely, and Paul does not appear to 
have tried to work them up into an orderly system. 
Like most men who are concerned primarily with 
practical problems, he refused to allow his interest 
in the main issues before him to be lessened by 
apparent inconsistencies in certain strands of his 
thinking. Beyond any doubt, the later mystical 
and vital union with Christ to which he refers so 
often in his writings took the place of his earlier 
Pharisaical views without, however, entirely sup- 
planting them. It is in this way, too, that we must 
understand many of his references to predestina- 
tion. It was the misfortune of the Middle Age 
theologians and of most of their Protestant suc- 


34 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


cessors that they stressed the accidental and earlier 
threads in the Pauline theology to the exclusion 
of the later and more vital conceptions of the 
Apostle. 


Paul’s teaching concerning the resurrection and 
its value as evidence of the reality of the future 
life occupies a position midway between his earlier 
and later points of view. In its logical and scien- 
tific aspects, it bears affinity to the earlier Greek 
and Hebrew viewpoint. On the other hand, it is 
linked directly to the Johannine thought of eternal 
life through direct and complete unity with Christ. 
Because Christ has been raised from the dead, 
those who are Christ’s followers shall also be 
raised with him. The case throughout, as Pro- 
fessor Stevens has taken pains to emphasize, is 
based upon the mystical rather than the universal 
concept of the resurrection. It ig indeed some- 
what difficult to reconcile the argument with the 
Greek theory of the inherent immortality of the 
soul. On the basis of the latter hypothesis, it 
would scarcely seem necessary to go to such ex- 
tremes as Paul does in order to prove the resurrec- 
tion from the dead. 


In the light of present conditions, it seems some- 
what unfortunate that theology as a whole should 
have placed such exclusive emphasis upon the 
Graeco-Pharisaic side of the Pauline eschatology. 
The influences which led to this development, how- 


IMMORTALITY AND THE TEACHING OF PAUL 30 


ever, appear simple enough in the light of historic 
investigation. In order to understand the prob- 
lems which confront us today in this particular 
field, it is necessary that we should next review 
the circumstances which produced what is usually 
termed the orthodox Christian view of immortality. 


REFERENCES 


1. G. B. Stevens, The Theology of the New Testament, Part 
IV, Chapter XII. 

2. G. B. Stevens, The Pauline Theology, Chapter XIII. 

3. J. Y. Simpson, Man and the Attainment of Immortality, 
Chapter XITT. 


CHAPTER IIT 


THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF 
IMMORTALITY 


HERE is a certain parallel between the early 

Hebrew and the early Greek views of immor- 
tality. Whether this fact arose as the result of a 
common source or whether it represents merely a 
natural coincidence need not at this time concern us. 
There were points of contact between the Greeks 
and the Hebrews, as the early Christian apologists 
were fond of emphasizing, and it may well be that 
a common tradition lay back of their concepts of 
the future life. The Hebrew Sheol and the Greek 
Hades as the latter term is used in Homer and 
Hesiod are practically identical. In both instances, 
there appears to have been a primitive and 
shadowy belief in the survival of the soul. Over 
this twilight territory, in early Jewish thinking, 
Jehovah had no control. Hezekiah, for example, 
in returning thanks for his recovery uses the ex- 
pressive language, ‘‘Sheol cannot praise thee, 
death cannot celebrate thee, they that go down in- 
to the pit cannot hope for thy truth.’’ Such ref- 
erences are rather numerous in the Old Testa- 
ment writings. The uncertain and hazy picture of 

36 


THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF IMMORTALITY 37 


the future life which they give led naturally to 
the dual development of Sadducaie and Pharisaic 
theology. The one proceeded to a definite and con- 
crete belief in personal immortality, while the other 
denied the after life altogether. This develop- 
ment, however, came rather late in the history of 
the Hebrew people. 


Among the Greeks, Hades, like Sheol, was at 
first merely the land of shades. Homer draws a 
vivid picture of this uncertain and undesirable 
state in the eleventh book of the Odyssey: ‘‘ Rather 
would I live on ground as the hireling of another, 
than to bear sway among all the dead that are 
departed.’’ The picture which we gather from 
the Iliad is similarly depressing. The very open- 
ing lines of the poem refer to ‘‘Pluto’s gloomy 
reign’’ and this coloring is maintained throughout 
the pages of the epic. In substance, we are given 
to understand that we know very little about Hades 
and what we do know is unattractive. 


The development of the Greek idea of immor- 
tality appears to have started from the post- 
Homeric cult of Dionysus which inspired the 
Greek mysteries and which was responsible for the 
beginning of Greek tragedy as well as of all that 
was vital in Greek theology. In the Dionysian 
rites, the union of the worshiper with his Deity 
is constantly emphasized. It is this union which 
constituted the basic teaching of the Orphic reli- 


‘ 


38 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


gious brotherhoods which became such tremendous 
factors in Greek history and life. We do not of 
course possess full information as to the mysteries 
but there seems to be no doubt that the essential 
principle involved in their multiform rites and 
ceremonies was that of communion in the most 
direct fashion with the Deity. They also taught 
the idea of regeneration and cleansing from sin, 
in part by means of ceremonial observances. 
Gradually the Orphic teachers elaborated a scheme 
of rewards and punishments in the other world 
quite analogous to the eschatological system of 
Mediaeval Christianity. Plato in the Republic 
denounces in the strongest language the abuses of 
the quacks and soothsayers of his day who crowd 
around rich men’s doors and play upon their 
superstitions by saying: 


They have a divine power which enables them through sacrifices 
and ineantations to atone for any sin whether committed by the 
man himself or by his ancestors, and further that if he should de- 
sire to work injury to anyone this can be arranged for at trifling 
expense, whether the object of his hostility be a just or an unjust 
man, for they profess that by certain spells and enchantments they 
can prevail upon the gods to do their bidding. 


Obviously such practices point to a very highly 
elaborated eschatological system. They have a 
certain modern ring about them in the light of 
Martin Luther’s experiences at the time of the 
Protestant Reformation. 


THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF IMMORTALITY 39 


Just how far the Dionysiae cults paved the way 
for the later Greek doctrine of immortality is 
somewhat difficult to say. Doctor Farnell in his 
volume entitled, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of 
Immortality advocates the view that their influ- 
ence was basic and profound. He thinks that their 
gospel of the salvation of the individual and their 
dogmas of future retribution and sacramental re- 
demption were of the most vital importance in the 
later development of religion. There appears to 
be no question that Pythagoras and his school were 
related to the Orphic movement, although there 
was a tendency at one time to cast some doubt up- 
on their affinity. Later investigation tends to 
make the relationship clearer. In hke manner, 
Plato seems to have derived at least some of 
his views from the Orphics. It is true that he 
eriticizes the cults rather unsparingly and yet 
many of his ideas are identical with their teach- 
ings. In almost all of the passages in his Dia- 
logues where he expounds the doctrine of immor- 
tality, he uses Orphie formulations and imagery. 
As a consequence not a few Platonic interpreters 
derive his teachings concerning the future life from 
the influence of the Mystery religions. 


On the other hand, the central feature in Plato’s 
doctrine of immortality is essentially opposed to 
the Orphie viewpoint. The guarantee of future 
existence afforded by the Mysteries consisted in the 


40 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


union of the worshiper with the Deity and with- 
out such union no continued existence could be 
predicated. In other words, the soul could become 
immortal as the result of certain definite condi- 
tions or processes, but possessed in itself no prom- 
ise of eternal life. Now this is precisely the op- 
posite of the Platonic doctrine. Immortality to 
the great Greek philosopher was inherent in the 
nature of the soul and could not be taken from 
it or destroyed. He says in the Laws: 


When we are dead, the bodies of the dead are justly said to be 
our shades or images, for the true and immortal being of each one 
of us, which is called the soul, goes on her way to other gods, that 
before them she may give an account. 


The Laws probably contains Plato’s final word 
on the subject, but the statement we have quoted 
is fairly representative of his thinking throughout 
his life. The chief argument for immortality 
which he advances in the Phaedo is that of the 
simple substantiality of the soul by virtue of which 
it is necessarily indestructible and on this account 
must remain untouched by death. Jowett, who 
ranks as the Greek philosopher’s most sympathetic 
and penetrating interpreter, at least during mo- 
dern times, sums up the situation in these words: 


If we ask what is that truth or principle which, towards the end 
of his life, seems to have absorbed Plato most, like the idea of good 
in the Republic, or of beauty in the Symposiwm, or of the unity of 
virtue in the Protagoras, we should answer, the priority of the soul 
to the body. 


THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF IMMORTALITY 41 


Plato, of course, believed in pre-existence and 
in an intermediate state of rewards and purgatorial 
punishments after death. In the Phaedrus, he 
works out an eschatological scheme which provides 
for the return of souls to earth somewhat along 
the lines of the Hindu religions. Absolutely hope- 
less individuals are cast down to Tartarus much 
after the manner in which Mediaeval theology con- 
demned those dying in mortal sin to the Inferno. 
Those, however, who died without being com- 
pletely purified were obliged to return to earth for 
eycles of from three to ten thousand years. After 
being purified as a result of repeated experiences 
of good and evil in the material world, they passed 
on to Elysium. As to the nature of the soul it- 
self, he ‘says, ‘‘The soul is immortal because its 
very idea and essence is the self-moved or self- 
moving, that which is the fountain and beginning 
of motion to all that moves besides. A body which 
is moved from without is soulless, but that which 
is moved from within has a soul.”’ 

Plato’s teaching involved a distinct dualism be- 
tween mind and matter which was productive of 
the most important consequences in later think- 
ing. Throughout his philosophy runs the contrast 
between the real world, the world of Ideas and 
the quasi-real world of everyday existence. The 
human soul occupied a species of intermediate 
position between these two worlds, having definite 


49 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


connections with both of them. The well-known 
figure of the Charioteer illustrates the difficult re- 
lationship involved in this situation. By virtue 
of his higher kinship, man is a partaker of immor- 
tality, but it is possible for him to be dragged 
down to a lower level as a result of his material 
environment. Hence it becomes necessary to mor- 
tify the body in order that the soul may live ‘and 
erow. Out of this fundamental dualism arose most 
of the ascetic practices of the Christian and other 
later religions. 


The arguments by which Plato sustained his be- 
lief in personal immortality are peculiarly unsatis- 
fying to the modern mind. He places much re- 
lianee upon the doctrine of pre-existence, a theory 
which modern psychology has practically elimi- 
nated. He also emphasizes the argument from the 
necessity of opposites. In other words, if we have 
death, we must have life, and vice versa. It is 
quite easy to see that this argument proves too 
much. As Pringle-Pattison says, ‘‘It would be 
possible to prove on the same principles a per- 
petual alternation between drunk and sober.’’ The 
doctrine of the unity of the soul as a simple and 
therefore indestructible substance has survived 
longer than the other proofs and still holds its 
place in the writings of a few philosophers. Never- 
theless, like so many other proofs, it is of value 
chiefly for those who already believe what is to 


THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF IMMORTALITY 433 


be proved. If one is convineed for any reason that 
the soul is simple and indivisible, of course it is 
easy for him to accept the idea that it will persist 
after death, but if he accepts the prevailing psy- 
chological definition of the ego, no such conclusion 
will result. There appears to be some question 
as to whether Plato regarded immortality as a 
characteristic of all souls alike or only as apper- 
taining to the higher rational faculties. In other 
words, through the higher reason we become 
citizens of the world of Ideas and therefore enter 
into its heritage of immortality. If, however, we 
sacrifice our birthright by failing to maintain com- 
munion with this higher reality it would seem that 
our divine inheritance would disappear. At this 
point, we come nearer to the Orphie view of con- 
ditional immortality. As a matter of fact, in 
Platonic as in Christian thinking, the two threads 
are frequently interwoven and it is sometimes dif- 
ficult to separate them. 


Aristotle approached the subject under discus- 
sion from the point of view of the scientist rather 
than the philosopher. Starting with what he calls 
the nutritive or vegetative soul, he adds, in an 
ascending seale, the sensitive soul belonging to the 
lower animals and, at the apex, the rational soul 
which is the peculiar distinction of man. Each 
of these stages develops from the one immediately 
preceding it and retains the characteristics which 


44 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


it inherits. It is in this connection that the 
philosopher emphasizes his fundamental distinc- 
tion between the potential and the actual or be- 
tween the formal and the material elements in 
reality. The earlier stages of life contain the 
higher stage potentially but not actually. The soul 
thus evolves out of the body, or as Aristotle him- 
self puts it, is ‘‘the functioning of the body at its 
highest level.’? In this theory of progressive de- 
velopment, Aristotle escapes from the dualism of 
Plato and anticipates much of our modern think- 
ing upon the subject. It does not require a great 
deal of imagination to deduce the Bergsonian 
theory of creative evolution from the Aristotelian 
position. The soul evolves out of the body in- 
stead of the body being the mere shadow of the 
soul. 

We have dealt in the most sketchy and outline 
fashion with the profound questions involved in 
this chapter. Nevertheless, we trust that the es- 
sential contribution of Greek thought to the prob- 
lem of immortality has been made sufficiently clear. 
The immense significance of this contribution im 
the development of Christian dogma deserves more 
detailed treatment at our hands. In a very real 
sense it is quite impossible to understand Chris- 
tian theology without an adequate acquaintance 
with its background of Greek philosophy. From 
Athanasius and Augustine to Calvin and Ritschl 
the leaders of Christian thought knew their Plato 


THE GREEK CONCEPTION OF IMMORTALITY 45 


and knew it well. During the Middle Ages, espe- 
cially, Plato and Aristotle were the chief inspirers 
of theological speculation. The orthodox dogma 
of immortality, while fundamentally derived from 
the New Testament, received much coloring and 
support from the thinkers of Hellas. We must 
turn now to consider the nature and extent of this 
influence. 


REFERENCES 


1. Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of Immortality. Lectures II. 
III, and IV. 

2. Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality. Chap- 
ter XIT. 

3. Homer, Iliad, Book I. 

4, Homer, Odyssey, Book XI. 

5. Plato, Dialogues (Jowett translation) Phaedo, Phaedrus, 
Timaeus, Symposium. | 

6. Plato, The Republic (Jowett) Introduction, Books VI and X. 

7. Plato, The Laws (Jowett) Introduction, Books I and IV. 

8. Aristotle, de Anima. Books I, II, and III. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE INFLUENCE OF GREEK THOUGHT 


UPON THE CHRISTIAN DOGMA OF 
IMMORTALITY 


HERE is a famous passage in the eighteenth 

book of The City of God in which St. Augustine 
bears witness to his high regard and affection for 
Plato. He says: 

Some of us liking and loving Plato for a certain eloquent and 
excellent kind of speaking and because his opinion has been true 
in some things, say that he thought something like unto that which 
we do, concerning the resurrection of the dead, which thing Tully 
so touches in his De Republica that he affirms that he rather spake 
in sport, than that he had any intent to relate it, as a matter of 
truth. For he declares a man revived, and related some things 
agreeable to Plato’s disputations. Labeo also says that there were 
two which died both in one day, and that they met together in a 
crossway, and that afterward they were commanded to return again 
to their bodies, and then that they decreed to live in perpetual love 
together, and that it was so until they died afterward. 


Augustine then goes on to cite other instances 
from pagan writers which prove the resurrection 
of the body and refers them to the followers of 
Plato and Porphyry as evidence that the Christian 
position is true. The passage is only one out of 
many in the works of the great Christian theologian 
which show his thorough esteem for the writings 
of the Athenian philosopher. Augustine in fact 

46 


GREEK THOUGHT AND IMMORTALITY 47 


owed his conversion to Christianity largely to 
Plato. The connecting lnk between his Mani- 
ehaean experience and his later orthodox Catholi- 
cism was furnished by Plato and Plotinus. By 
means of the neo-Platonic monism he was delivered 
from the dualistic scheme of Manes and was pre- 
pared intellectually for the acceptance of the Chris- 
tian dogma. It was only natural that he should 
have earried over into Christianity much of the 
Platonic philosophy. In fact, Augustinianism 
which exerted such profound influence upon later 
theology is fundamentally a compound of Paulin- 
ism and Platonism with sundry other subsidiary 
features derived in part from the personal experi- 
ence of the great thinker and from the historical 
circumstances of the age in which he lived.” 


Augustine did not of course entirely agree with 
Plato. Wherever there appears to him to be a real 
conflict between the Athenian teacher and the words 
of Holy Writ, the latter have the right of way. 
Even in such instances, however, he expresses his 
regret and as far as possible tones down the con- 
tradiction. The essential features of the Augus- 
tinian doctrine of immortality, which later came 
to be the accepted viewpoint of the church as a 
whole, may be summarized after the following 
fashion: First, God is the creator of all souls, 
good and bad alike; second, dependent upon the 
will of God, all souls are inherently immortal; 


48 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


third, there will be a resurrection of the bodies 
which have perished as a result of death, these 
bodies rejoining the souls which formerly inhabited 
them and receiving after the general judgment 
elther eternal bliss or eternal punishment in ac- 
cordance with their deeds upon earth and with the 
will of God. In support of these contentions, 
Augustine cites certain proof-texts from the New 
Testament and appeals to their infallibility in the 
same way that the advocates of verbal inspiration 
have always done throughout the centuries. He 
refers to the Resurrection and to other miracles as 
evidence of the future life, but his main line of argu- 
ment is based upon his theory of the nature of God 
and of the essential relations existing between God 
and man. For example, his argument against the 
Platonists’ position that it is impossible that a 
material body can be taken up into heaven is based 
entirely upon the omnipotence of God: 

Why then cannot God that made this creature, transport an 
earthly body into heaven, as well as he can bring a soul (a purer 
essence than any celestial body) down from heaven and inclose it 
in a form of earth? Can this little piece of earth include so excel- 
lent a nature in it, and live by it, and cannot heaven entertain it, 


nor keep it in it, seeing that it lives by an essence more excellent 
than heaven itself! 


From the Augustinian point of view, there is 
literally nothing impossible to the Divine Nature. 
Souls will live hereafter because God go wills it 
and has so created human spirits. Moreover, our 


GREEK THOUGHT AND IMMORTALITY 49 


material bodies will be resurrected and will live 
in heaven. (Here Augustine disagrees with Plato 
and with the Platonic school generally.) Further- 
more, the fires of hell are of such a character that 
they will consume these material bodies eternally 
and in such fashion that they will never become 
insensible: 

Wherefore though our flesh now be such that it cannot suffer all 
pain, without dying, yet then shall it become of another nature, as 
death also then shall be of another nature for the death then shall 
be eternal, and the soul that suffers it shall neither be able to live, 
having lost her God, her only life, nor yet to avoid torment, having 
lost all means of death. The first death forces her from the body 


against her will, and the second holds her in the body against her 
will. 


He then goes on to cite the case of the salaman- 
der which, ‘‘as the most exact naturalists record,’’ 
lives in fire, and also of certain hills in Sicily that 
have been on fire continually ‘‘from beyond the 
memory of man, and yet remain whole and uncon- 
sumed’’ as sufficient proofs that it is possible for 
bodies to remain undiminished in fire. Further- 
more, the incorporeal devils who do not have bodies 
like human beings will also suffer the torments of 
perdition throughout eternity. In Chapter Ten of 
the seventeenth book of The City of God, he pre- 
sents his argument for this position: 

But that hell, that lake of fire and brimstone, shall be real, and 


the fire corporeal, burning both men and devils, the one in flesh and 
the other in air: the one in the body adherent to the spirit, and 


50 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


the other in the spirit only adherent to the fire, and yet not infus- 
ing life, but feeling torment, for one fire shall torment both men 
and devils. Christ has spoken it. 


It would be tedious, and we think unnecessary, 
to quote further from Augustine with regard to 
the question of immortality. It is obvious through- 
out his writings that he believed his theology to be 
derived entirely from the Scriptures and yet any 
careful student of his life cannot but realize that 
the unconscious influence of Platonism and of 
Greek thought generally were the guiding prin- 
ciples in his exegesis. The eternal substance of 
the soul, the impossibility of dissolving or destroy- 
ing it, the stern schedule of rewards and punish- 
ments, these things all come fundamentally by way 
of Hellas. Dante, who reflects Augustine, or at 
least the Augustinian eschatology with extraor- 
dinary fidelity, turns to the Greek Tartarus di- 
rectly for material for his Inferno. Obviously, the 
final teaching of the church during the Mediaeval 
period was derived, as Loisy frankly admits, from 
a synthesis of many divergent elements, but there 
was no characteristic more important than the con- 
tribution made by the great Greek philosophers. 

The early Christian fathers beginning with 
Clement of Alexandria did not agree with Augus- 
tine at all points concerning the future life. 
Origen, for example, accepted the doctrine of res- 
titution and of ultimate universal restoration. 
Jerome in all probability held similar views. Even 


GREEK THOUGHT AND IMMORTALITY 51 


in these instances, however, the Platonic influence 
is no less marked than it is in Augustine. Clement 
of Alexandria in particular was a disciple and ad- 
mirer of the Athenian philosopher and held that 
he was in all essential respects a Christian. The 
influence of neo-Platonism upon the Alexandrian 
school has been frequently emphasized. As many 
recent authorities have pointed out, there is much 
in the system of Plotinus which passed over into 
Christian theology. We are concerned here only 
with the subject of immortality, but in this par- 
ticular field no less than in others the indebtedness 
of Christian dogma to both the earlier and the 
later Greek thinkers is extensive and profound. 
For many centuries after the period of the gen- 
eral councils, as Canon Farrar puts it, ‘‘the dark 
shadow of Augustine’’ was thrown so powerfully 
over the current theology that there was little ques- 
tion about the endlessness of torment or of any 
of the other sombre eschatological features in the 
writings of the great Bishop of Hippo. In process 
of time, the stern rigidity of the Augustinian teach- 
ing became intolerable for even the Mediaeval con- 
science and as a result the doctrine of purgatory 
was evoked to soften it. Scotus Hrigena, it should 
be said, in the period between Augustine and An- 
selm appears to have approached the early Johan- 
nine conception of the future life more nearly than 
the orthodox theologians but there is some ques- 
tion as to whether he did not pass over into real 


52 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


Pantheism. While the church generally accepted 
the doctrine of purgatory, it held also to the old 
Augustinian views of the eternal torment of the 
impenitent and of the eternal happiness of the 
redeemed. The earlier teachings concerning a 
final judgment and the eschatological situation 
in general were accepted as commonplaces of reli- 
gion. The Mediaeval mind was essentially other- 
worldly and ascetic in its temper. The life beyond 
to most adherents of the church was more real 
than the present existence. Every day on earth 
was lived, so to speak, in the presence of the here- 
after and life itself was regarded in the light of a 
gloomy pilgrimage to the highlands of eternity. 
It is scarcely to be questioned that the conviction 
of personal immortality was more pronounced and 
more unhesitating during the Mediaeval era than at 
any other time in the history of the world. 
Heaven and hell were supreme realities, and no 
earthly assize could be more certain or inescapable 
than the great final judgment which Michel- 
angelo has pictured on the wall of the Sistine 
Chapel. Doubtless there were a few skeptics even 
during these days, but they were uninfluential and 
for the most part unknown. In the current state 
of mind of both rulers and people, it was not 
wholesome to entertain or to express doubts con- 
cerning any of these important matters. A gen- 
eration which accepted with literal exactness the 


GREEK THOUGHT AND IMMORTALITY Oo 


gruesome details of the hell of Dante and Augus- 
tine was not squeamish about the infliction of 
punishments in this material world. No offense 
against the moral law was looked upon as more 
serious than theological heresy. Under the cir- 
cumstances, people who had doubts preferred to 
keep them to themselves or put them aside as sim- 
ply suggestions of the devil with a view to the 
eternal destruction of their souls. 


In the finely spun and almost interminable dis- 
cussions of the Schoolmen, covering as it would 
seem almost everything in the world or out of it, 
there is no essential difference concerning the doc- 
trine of the future life. From Anselm to Occam, 
all of them were agreed as concerning the im- 
mortality of the soul and the general schedule of 
future rewards and punishments. St. Anselm in 
the seventy-second chapter of the Monologium has 
admirably summed up the thought of the period 
in the words, ‘‘Every human soul is immortal. 
And it is either forever miserable, or at some time 
purely blessed.’’ 

In the discussion of this proposition, which 
serves as the theme of the chapter, Anselm proves 
that even the souls of infants are immortal be- 
cause all human spirits are of the same nature and 
since the redeemed are eternally blessed, there- 
fore the characteristic of immortality must ap- 
pertain to all. To quote his own language: 


o4+ HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


But undoubtedly all human souls are of the same nature. Hence, 
since it is established that some are immortal, every human soul 
must be immortal. But since every living being is either never, or 
at some time, truly secure from all trouble, necessarily also, every 
human soul is either ever miserable, or at some time truly blessed. 


With the rediscovery of Plato and Aristotle in 
the original, scholasticism became more pro- 
nouncedly Hellenistic than before. The Platonic 
ideas furnished the basis of the philosophy of 
Realism while Nominalism drew its inspiration 
from the principles of Aristotle. Practically every 
Mediaeval theologian was either a Platonist or an 
Aristotelian or a combination of the two. Marsilio 
Ficino was not the only student of his age who 
kept a votive lamp burning continually before the 
bust of Plato, nor was Mirandola the only devout 
Catholic who, as Streeter says, ‘‘devoted all his 
passionate power to the reconciliation of Platon- 
ism and Christianity.’’ Humanism itself was sim- 
ply an illustration of the preponderance of the 
classical influence over its Christian setting. The 
Schoolmen proper did not go so far, but the sub- 
conscious influence of the great classical philoso- 
phers upon their lives was none the less extensive 
and profound. The Greek concept of immortality 
passed into Christian thought and became an 
integral part of the orthodox Christian eschat- 


ology. 


or 


GREEK THOUGHT AND IMMORTALITY t 


REFERENCES 


1. St. Augustine, The City of God. Books XVII and XVIII. 

. Dante, The Divine Comedy, The Inferno. 

. Workman, Christian Thought to the Reformation, Chapter IT. 
F. W. Farrar, The Eternal Hope, Sermon ITI. 

. St. Anselm, Monologium, Chapter XXIT. 

. A. Streeter, Monograph on Botticelli, Chapter I. 


> Of oo bo 


CHAPTER V 
IMMORTALITY AND THE CREEDS 


HE statements concerning the future life 
‘ which are found in the Ecumenical creeds are 
plain and simple assertions of the commonly ac- 
. cepted thinking upon the subject. The general 
judgment, the second coming of Christ, the life 
everlasting, the resurrection of the body (the lat- 
ter term interpreted in various ways), and other 
somewhat general expressions make up the sub- 
stance of the eschatological material. It must be 
said that there is room for considerable difference 
of opinion as to the implications of some of these 
ereedal provisions. There is little reason to doubt 
that those who formulated these standards of faith 
* held to the prevailing views of the inherent im- 
mortality of the soul and the Graeco-Christian 
position in general. At the same time, the more 
distinctly mystical interpretation of eternal life 
~ undoubtedly found a place in the thought of 
not a few of these early theologians. Perhaps this 
interpretation was more often unconscious than 
conscious, but in any event it blossoms forth in the 
pages of their writings at times under the most 
unexpected circumstances. 

56 


IMMORTALITY AND THE CREEDS sf! 


With the dawn of the reformation, the Mediaeval 
doctrine of immortality held full sway through- 
out the church. Protestantism for the most part 
went back of the scholastics to Augustine and to 
Paul, the latter interpreted always in the light of 
the teachings of the former. There were certain 
eschatological details concerning which the new 
movement as a whole diverged widely from 
the Roman Catholic viewpoint. The doctrine of 
indulgences which furnished the immediate occa- 
sion of Martin Luther’s rebellion constituted one 
of these points of difference. The dogma of pur- 
gatory in general speedily came under the Prot- 
estant ban and was universally rejected by the 
reformers. Augustine knows nothing of purga- 
tory and Calvin and Luther as we have seen went 
back directly to Augustine. As a consequence, 
the teaching of current Protestant theology con- 
cerning the future life was harsher, more sombre, 
and more antithetical to our modern standards 
than was the parallel doctrine of Roman Catholi- 
cism. Aquinas toned down the rigors of the 
Augustinian Inferno and the Roman Catholics ac- 
cepted this modified position while the Protes- 
tants reverted to the most extreme forms of the 
earlier eschatology. Calvin’s hell is if anything 
worse than Augustine’s, and Protestantism almost 
without exception followed Calvin in his views of 
the subject. The culmination of this morbid es- 
chatology is found in the sermons of Jonathan 


58 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


Edwards which have become classics in this partic- 
ular field. Canon Farrar quotes as an illustration 
of Edwards’ teaching this passage from his ser- 
mon entitled ‘‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry 
Bea Ls Pee 


The God that holds you over the pit of hell much in the same 
way as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, 
abhors you and is dreadfully provoked 


and inquires whether this is to be regarded as 
orthodox teaching or not. He also quotes from 
the contemporary discourses of Mr. Charles H. 
Spurgeon to the following effect: 


Thou wilt look up there on the throne of God, and it shall be 
written, ‘‘Forever.’’ When the damned jingle the burning irons of 
their torment they shall say, ‘‘Forever!’’ When they howl, Echo 
eries, ‘‘ Forever! ’’ 


‘¢ Forever’? is written on their racks, 
‘<FWorever’’ on their chains, 
‘“Forever’’ burneth in the fire, 
‘¢Forever,’’ ever reigns. 


In the commentaries of Adam Clarke, Matthew 
Henry, and other authoritative Protestant inter- 
preters, we find expressions very similar to those 
used by Edwards and Spurgeon. Clarke espe- 
cially appears to take delight in harrowing the feel- 
ings of his readers by the most elaborate com- 
ments upon the Scriptural passages which refer 
to the undying worm and the unquenchable fire. 
This type of exegesis was practically universal 


~ 


IMMORTALITY AND THE CREEDS 59 


on the part of Protestant evangelists and the 
clergy in general. Even in our own age the ser- 
mons of many evangelists are saturated with it. 
During the last half century, the pulpit as a whole, 
as Canon Gore so aptly says, has discarded the 
doctrine, but there has been no serious attempt to 
revise creedal standards in the interest of the new 
interpretation. 

The Roman Catholic eschatology is given in 
authoritative fashion in the decrees of the Council 
of Trent. In this historic document, the doctrines 
of purgatory, indulgences, and the future state in 
general are expressed, for the most part, in har- 
mony with the views of Aquinas and his contem- 
poraries. In Session VI, Canon 30, we find the 
following statement: 

If any one saith, that after the grace of Justification has been 
received, to every penitent sinner, the guilt is remitted and the 
debt of eternal punishment is blotted out in such wise that there 
remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged 
either in this world, or in the next in Purgatory, before the en- 


trance to the kingdom of heaven can be opened: let him be 
anathema. 


In the main, Roman Catholicism has adhered 
more rigidly to the dogma of personal immortality 
so far as clerical teaching is concerned than has 
been true of current Protestantism. The voice of 
the church, with the exception of a few modernists, 
has been unanimous in support of the orthodox 
doctrine of personal survival. Whether the bulk 


~ 


60 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


of the laity has escaped the contagion of doubt 
upon the subject which has swept over the world 
during the last half century it is difficult to say. 
To a much larger degree than is true of the aver- 
age Protestant, the devout Catholic entrusts his 
religious thinking. to his ecclesiastical superiors. 
On this account, belief in the future life is probably 
more general on the part of the Roman Catholic 
masses than is true of Protestantism. This is not 
because the doctrinal standards of the latter 
diverge at this point from those of the older 
church, but simply because they have less prac- 
tical weight in the thought life of their adherents. 


The teaching of the Reformed churches is quite 
specific upon the question. In Martin Luther’s 
Shorter Catechism, it is distinctly taught that the 
general judgment includes all human beings and 
that the righteous are to live forever in bliss and 
the wicked in eternal torment. The resurrection 
of the material body of Christ is directly asserted 
and is indicated as a type of our own resurrection. 
The Heidelberg Catechism says specifically in an- 
swer to the question, ‘‘What comfort does the 
resurrection of the body give you?”’ 


That not only my soul, upon the leaving this life, shall be imme- 
diately carried up to heaven, to be united with Jesus Christ its 
Head, but that my body, being also raised again by the power of 
that Divine Redeemer, shall be reunited to my soul, and rendered 
conformable to the glorious body of Jesus Christ. 


IMMORTALITY AND THE CREEDS 61 


It is interesting to note in this connection that 
the Heidelberg formula approximates more nearly 
to the Johannine conception of eternal life than is 
true of most other pronouncements of the period. 
In answer to the question, ‘‘ And what consolation 
do you receive from the article of eternal life?’’ 
the catechism says, 


That as at present I perceive in my heart a beginning of eternal 
glory, I shall likewise after this life enjoy that perfect happiness 
which the eye has not seen or ear heard, and which never entered 
into the heart of man to conceive, by praising God through all 
eternity. 


The Shorter Westminster Catechism asserts 
the Augustinian eschatology practically without 
modification. Lightfoot in his interpretation of 
the Thirty-nine Articles somewhat modifies the 
ordinary meaning of Article ITV which deals with 
the resurrection of Christ but asserts that it clearly 
teaches a ‘‘belief in the continued life of the spirit, 
when, after the body dies, it returns to that in- 
visible world by which the visible world which we 
inhabit is so mysteriously surrounded.’’ 

Hagenbach in his History of Christian Doctrine 
sums up the matter, we think very correctly, in 
the following words upon the eschatology of the 
Reformation period: 

And, lastly, Protestants and Roman Catholics were in almost per- 
fect accordance as to the doctrine of the last things (with the ex- 


ception of the doctrine concerning purgatory). The minor sects 
also adopted, in the main, the same views respecting the second 


62 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


advent of Christ to judge the world, and the resurrection of the 
body. As regards the state of the blessed and the lost, the opin- 
ions of the different denominations were modified in various ways 
by their respective creeds, but these differences were not introduced 
into the symbolical books. 


The creedal confessions of orthodox Christen- 
dom remain of course today precisely what they 
were at the time of the Reformation. In actual 
practice, however, among the Protestant churches, 
the interpretations which the vast majority of both 
the clergy and the laity attach to these historic 
symbols diverge widely from those which were 
commonly accepted when the creeds were written. 
This changed point of view has largely come about 
as a result of the scientific progress of the last 
half century. The situation has been admirably 
outlined by Bishop Gore in his recent volume en- 
titled Belief in God. In discussing ‘‘The Break- 
down of Tradition’’ at the very beginning of the 
book, he refers to the prevailing note of the day 
with regard to the older standards of the chureh 
as one ‘‘of uncertainty and even bewilderment.”’ 
This uncertainty and bewilderment apply espe- 
cially to the problem of immortality. The reac- 
tion from the extreme Calvinistic view concern- 
ing the future life and especially future punish- 
ment is now in full swing. However we may ac- 
count for the fact, no careful observer of the pres- 
ent religious situation can dispute the correctness 
of the above statement. 


IMMORTALITY AND THE CREEDS 63 


The extent to which Protestant views in the field 
of eschatology have really changed is admirably 
illustrated in the brief outline of the Reformed 
faith given as an introduction to The Presbyterian 
Handbook for 1923. Comparing the statements 
contained in this summary of present day Cal- 
vinism with the doctrine of Augustine and the 
Protestant theologians who imitated him so faith- 
fully, one is conscious of the widest divergence. 
The rigid predestination of the older thinkers is 
softened down to the following comparatively in- 
nocuous declaration: 


We believe that God, from the beginning, in His own good 
pleasure, gave to His Son a people, an innumerable multitude, 
chosen in Christ, unto holiness, service, and salvation, we believe 
that all who come to years of discretion can receive this salvation 
only through faith and repentance; and we believe that all who die 
in infancy, and all others given by the Father to the Son who are 
beyond the reach of the outward means of grace are regenerated 
and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who works when and where 
and how He pleases. 


In the section entitled ‘‘Of the Resurrection and 
the Life to Come,’’ we find this declaration: 


We believe that in the life to come the spirits of the just, at 
death made free from sin, enjoy immediate communion with God 
and the vision of His glory; and we confidently look for the gen- 
eral resurrection in the last day, when the bodies of those who 
sleep in Christ shall be fashioned in the likeness of the glorious 
body of their Lord, with whom they shall live and reign forever. 


Ded 


ran 


64. HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


One cannot help wondering what Jonathan Ed- 
wards or even John Calvin himself would say con- 
cerning the section entitled ‘‘Of the Last Judg- 
ment.’’ It runs as follows: 


We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ will come again in glori- 
ous majesty to judge the world and to make a final separation be- 
tween the righteous and the wicked. The wicked shall receive the 
eternal award of their sins, and the Lord will manifest the glory 
of His mercy in the salvation of His people and their entrance 
upon the full enjoyment of eternal life. 


The three sections above quoted contain prac- 
tically everything which has to do with the field 
of eschatology. It will be readily observed that we 
have traversed a great distance in these carefully 
guarded pronouncements from the stern and clear- 
cut interpretations of the centuries past. There is 
practically nothing said about hell, about the in- 
herent immortality of the human spirit or about 
the resurrection of the material body. It is stated 
that there is to be a separation of the righteous 
from the wicked at the general judgment, but the 
status of the condemned is not definitely indicated. 

What has taken place in the thought of the most 
theologically inclined of all Protestant com- 
munions has doubtless been true in greater or less 
degree of the others. We must now turn to con- 
sider more in detail the influences which have led 
to what Bishop Gore calls the ‘‘note of uncertainty 
and bewilderment’’ which characterizes so much of 
the present day thinking upon immortality. 


IMMORTALITY AND THE CREEDS 65 


REFERENCES 


1. Farrar, The Eternal Hope. Sermon 3. 

2. A. Clarke, Commentary on Mark IX. 

3. C. Gore, Belief in God, Chapter I. 

4. Hagenbach, History of Christian Doctrine, Vol. II, seventh 
division. 

5. The Presbyterian Handbook for 1923, Introduction. 

6. Jonathan Edwards’ Sermons. 

7. The Heidelberg Catechism, questions 57, 58. 


CHAPTER VI 
MODERN PHILOSOPHY AND IMMORTALITY 


Inv, [RES philosophy begins with Descartes. 
The French thinker in his efforts to secure 
a solid basis for metaphysics postulated his fa- 
mous ‘‘cogito ergo sum”’ (I think, therefore I am) 
as the irreducible minimum of speculation. The 
Cartesian doctrine of the soul, at bottom, differed 
but little from St. Anselm’s, and the ontological 
argument of the latter is really back of the French 
philosopher’s viewpoint. Descartes believed in the 
soul as a simple substance, quite in harmony with 
the Mediaeval teaching. He was hard put to it 
to explain the interaction of soul and body, but it 
is only fair to say that his successors have not 
greatly improved upon the way in which he met 
the situation. 


Spinoza, and to a certain extent Leibnitz, de- 
veloped the modern theory of psycho-physical 
parallelism and attempted to get rid of Descartes’ 
problem by the simple process of ignoring it. 
Spinoza in his doctrine of the one unitary Sub- 
stance with its two parallel attributes of thought 
and extension, or, as we may express them, of body 
and mind, anticipated much that is found in recent 

66 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY AND IMMORTALITY 67 


psychological discussion. Of course from the 
Spinozistic viewpoint, personal immortality is un- 
tenable. Reality pertains to Substance alone and 
consciousness in the individual, at death, simply 
merges into the all-inclusive Absolute. 


Locke and the English Empirical school attacked 
the Cartesian doctrine of a soul substance with the 
utmost vigor. In dealing with the subject of iden- 
tity and diversity, he argues that the idea of an im- 
material substance is absurd. It has no function 
to discharge and the law of parsimony demands 
that it should be abandoned. William James, 
James Ward, F. H. Bradley, and many other 
modern psychologists in their arguments against 
the older theories of the soul do little more than 
repeat the considerations previously advanced by 
Locke. The final result of the Lockian criticism 
as it developed into the idealism of Berkeley and 
the skepticism of David Hume, is well known. 
Locke himself did not think that he was doing any 
damage to religion by getting rid of the immaterial 
soul. To quote his own language, ‘‘ All the great 
ends of morality and religion are well enough 
secured, without philosophical proofs of the soul’s 
immateriality.’’ In the light of later develop- 
ments, it may be questioned whether his confidence 
was justified. 


Locke’s Empiricism found its final culmination 
in the philosophical nihilism of Hume. The latter 


68 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


-» philosopher disposes of the doctrine of immortal- 
ity in his Essays in the most simple and complete 
fashion. His argument is worth quoting somewhat 
in detail because present day skepticism has not 
improved upon it: 


Metaphysical topics suppose that the soul is immaterial, and 
that it is impossible for thought to belong to a material substance. 
But just metaphysics teach us, that the notion of substance is 
wholly confused and imperfect, and that we have no other idea of 
any substance, than as an aggregate of particular qualities inher- 
ing in an unknown something. Matter, therefore, and spirit, are at 
bottom equally unknown, and we cannot determine what qualities 
inhere in the one or in the other. . . . . The most positive 
asserter of the mortality of the soul never denies the immortality 
of its substance, and that an immaterial substance, as well as a 
material, may lose its memory or consciousness, appears in part 
from experience, if the soul be immaterial. Reasoning from the 
common course of nature, and without supposing any new interpo- 
sition of the Supreme Cause, which ought always to be excluded 
from philosophy, what is incorruptible must also be ingenerable. 
The soul, therefore, if immortal, existed before our birth, and if 
the former existence no ways concerned us, neither will the latter. 
Animals undoubtedly feel, think, love, hate, will and even reason, 
though in a more imperfect manner than men. Are their souls also 
immaterial and immortal?’’ 


Having demolished the metaphysical arguments 
for immortality, Hume turns to the moral argu- 
ment and shows that it is impossible to predicate 
the divine action upon the basis of human judg- 
ment. He says very cleverly that the justice of 
God is beyond our comprehension and that we 
have no right to draw any specific conclusions 
from it. To quote his own language, ‘‘It is very 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY AND IMMORTALITY 69 


safe for us to affirm, that whatever we know the 
Deity to have actually done is best, but it is very 
dangerous to affirm that He must always do what 
to us seems best.’’ He is especially satirical in 
dealing with the question of future rewards and 
punishments. He says: 


Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good 
and the bad, but the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice 
and virtue. Were one to go round the world with an intention of 
giving a good supper to the righteous and a sound drubbing to 
the wicked, he would frequently be embarrassed in his choice, and 
would find the merits and demerits of most men and women scarcely 
amount to the value of either. 


It is in his reference to the physical arguments 
that the Scotch philosopher appears to make his 
best ease. He contends that the analogy of nature 
is all against the survival of the soul after death. 
The last symptoms which we find present in the 
mind are those of disorder, weakness, insensibility, 
and stupidity, ‘‘the forerunners of its annihila- 
tion.’”’ Even sleep, he says, is attended with 
‘‘temporary extinction’’ or at least ‘‘a great con- 
fusion in the soul.’’ He continues: 


Judging by the usual analogy of nature, no form can continue 
when transferred to a condition of life very different from the 
original one in which it was placed. Trees perish in the water, 
fishes in the air, animals in the earth. Even so small a difference 
as that of climate is often fatal. What reason then to imagine 
that an immense alteration, such as is made on the soul by the dis- 
solution of its body, and all its organs of thought and sensation, 
ean be effected without the dissolution of the whole? Everything 


70 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


is in common between soul and body. The organs of the one are 
all of them the organs of the other, the existence, therefore, of the 
one must be dependent on the other. The souls of animals are 
allowed to be mortal, and they bear so near a resemblance to the 
souls of men, that the analogy from one to the other forms a very 
strong argument. 


Hume is distressed by the problem presented 
in the innumerable multitude of beings who would 
have to be provided with eternal habitations if 
they were all immortal. Every planet in every 
solar system, he thinks, may be peopled with in- 
telligent beings who would deserve immortality 
just as much as we do. This being true, it would 
require the constant construction of new universes 
in order to find accommodations for such a host. 
The problem is large enough even when regarded 
only from the point of view of our own earthly 
history. 


When it is asked, whether Agamemnon, Thersites, Hannibal, 
Varro, and every stupid clown that ever existed in Italy, Scythia, 
Bactria, or Guinlea, are now alive, can any man think, that a 
scrutiny of nature will furnish arguments strong enough to answer 
80 strange a question in the affirmative? 


Hume concludes, therefore, that the immortality 
of the soul cannot be demonstrated by the mere 
light of reason and that ‘‘it is the gospel, and the 
gospel alone that has brought life and immortality 
to light.”’ In view of his general attitude toward 
religion, the last quotation appears to possess no 
slight degree of irony. 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY AND IMMORTALITY (al 


Kant, as the world knows, followed Hume. In 
the Critique of Pure Reason, the conclusions 
reached with regard to personal immortality are 
precisely those given in the paragraph above. 
Human reason, Kant agrees, is utterly incapable 
of demonstrating immortality. In the Critique of 
Practical Reason, however, the German philosopher 
comes back strong in defense of the doctrines which 
he had disproved in his earlier volume. God, 
Freedom, and Immortality are all postulates of the 
practical reason and therefore must be accepted, 
although their truthfulness cannot be theoretically 
demonstrated. With regard to immortality, Kant 
says that it is necessarily demanded by the moral 
order of the universe and that ethics is impossible 
without it. In the present world, justice is not 
always done, but in a moral universe justice must 
always triumph. Therefore there must be another 
world in order to preserve the moral order. Of 
course, Kant does not pretend to prove that the 
universe is moral. He assumes this and assuming 
it produces his argument for survival. Granted 
the necessary presupposition and Kant’s position 
will always have great weight. With a type of 
mind which is inclined toward pessimism, it will 
have no more value than the theoretical proofs 
so elaborately demolished in the Critique of Pure 
Reason. 


The post-Kantian philosophers, Fichte, Schel- 


rp HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


ling, and Hegel in the main tended in the direction 
of a Pantheistic absorption of the individual soul 
in the Absolute. It is somewhat difficult to say 
just what their views with regard to individual 
immortality were in most cases but the tendency 
was in the direction indicated. Even Schleier- 
macher appears to have been doubtful about in- 
dividual immortality. The left wing Hegelians 
plunged completely into the abyss of Atheism or 
at the best into a materialistic Pantheism which 
found no place for the existence of the soul, to say 
nothing of its survival after death. On the other 
hand, the English and Scotch neo-Hegelians such 
as Thomas Hill Green, the Cairds, the Seths, Wal- 
lace, and others of the same school carefully 
guarded the doctrine of immortality along with 
their belief in the Hegelian Absolute. James Seth 
in the concluding section of his Ethical Principles 
draws a clear line of demarcation between his own 
position and what may be styled the typical 
Hegelian conclusion with regard to immortality. 
His brother, A. Seth (Pringle-Pattison) in his two 
series of Gifford lectures has brilliantly presented 
the same point of view. Professor Josiah Royce 
has also argued for personal immortality upon a 
neo-Hegelian basis. Sir Henry Jones in his late 
Gifford series entitled A Faith That Enqures 
reaches similar conclusions. It appears only fair 
to say that the neo-Hegelian school as a whole has 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY AND IMMORTALITY 73 


stood out more thoroughly in defense of personal 
immortality than any other movement in the field 
of philosophy during the last century. 

Co-extensive with the rise of the doctrine of 
evolution came the development of Agnosticism as 
an attempted solution of the problems of the uni- 
verse. Mr. Herbert Spencer, who may be regarded 
as the apostle of the school, relegated Kant’s 
postulates of the practical reason to the Unknow- 
able and refused to discuss them further. The 
prevailing attitude of Agnosticism toward the 
future life is seen at its best in the epitaph of 
Thomas H. Huxley written by his wife. 


Be not afraid, ye waiting souls that weep; 
For still He giveth His beloved sleep, 
And if an endless sleep He wills, so best. 


One line of development from Kant which has 
exerted more influence over present day thinking 
than is usually supposed is that of the pessimistic 
idealism of Schopenhauer and his disciples. Start- 
ing with the Absolute as unconscious will or mere 
blind striving, Schopenhauer developed an amaz- 
ingly clever interpretation of reality. From his 
point of view, personal immortality is a delusion 
and a sham, the desire for it originating in the 
presence of the unconscious Will to live in us 
which of course will go on in other forms of 
existence after our personalities have disappeared. 
Von Hartmann, in his Philosophy of the Uncon- 


74 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


scious, has carried Schopenhauer’s position 
farther and has singularly anticipated much pres- 
ent day discussion. The influence of the pessimists 
upon present day thought has been accentuated by 
its brilliant presentation in the novels of Thomas 
Hardy and other -well-known writers of modern 
prose and poetry. Quite a good deal of the present 
uncertainty with regard to a future life arises, 
consciously or unconsciously, from the subtle in- 
fluence of Schopenhauer and his followers. 

One of the significant forces in modern thought, 
especially in its influence upon organized Chris- 
tianity, is the philosophy of Positivism as taught 
by August Comte and his followers. Positivism 
rules out any possible immortality for the individ- 
ual, finding its satisfaction in the immortality of 
the race. Idealized humanity living under perfect 
social surroundings and with ever increasing mate- 
rial comforts is the goal of the positive philosophy. 
As a distinct religious movement, Positivism 
failed completely but it may be questioned whether 
it has not achieved pronounced success in its in- 
roads upon orthodox Christianity. The number 
of ministers and church leaders generally who are 
really Positivists in their thinking at the present 
time is much larger than most people suppose. 
Comte failed to conquer the church from the out- 
side, but it remains to be seen whether he will 
sueceed in his attack from within. Much of the 
popularity of Positivism, as was true in the case 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY AND IMMORTALITY ) 


of pessimism, arises from its artistic presenta- 
tion. For example, the doctrine of racial immor- 
tality sounds tremendously appealing in a poem 
like George Eliot’s The Choir Invisible: 


O may I join the choir invisible 

Of those immortal dead who live again 

In minds made better by their presence; live 

In pulses stirred to generosity; 

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 

Of miserable aims that end with self; 

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
And with their mild persistence urge men’s minds 
To vaster issues. 


Notwithstanding the high altruism of such an 
appeal, the fact remains that there is a pessimistic 
coloring about it which makes it ineffective as a 
motive force with the large majority of human 
beings. 


The latest movement in contemporary philos- 
ophy, the New Realism, is on the whole unsym- 
pathetic with the idea of personal immortality. 
Starting from a more or less materialistic basis, 
the New Realist achieves negative or at best doubt- 
ful conclusions with regard to the perdurability 
of the human personality. Mr. Bertrand Russell, 
for example, finds little solace in the positivistic 
viewpoint of George Eliot since the race which ab- 
sorbs all individual values must itself come fo an 
end at some period, and thus destroy everything 
that human beings with so much self-sacrifice have 


76 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


accumulated, and yet he has no faith in the doc- 
trine of individual immortality. Perhaps the best 
statement of the realistic attitude is given by Pro- 
fessor Alexander in his Gifford lectures entitled 
Space, Time and Deity. In the concluding chap- 
ter of this series, ‘‘ Deity and Value,’’ he says: 


The mere desire that we feel to be present ourselves and con- 
tinue our work begun here, admirable as it is, because the passion 
to do things ourselves is at the root of all our endeavours, cannot 
overrule the facts of our apparent limitation to the time and place 
of our bodily life. The data do not allow us to suppose, so far as 
we have seen, that our minds, even if we believe that they only 
use the body as an instrument, do exist without the instrument, and 
we are certainly not entitled because of our desire of a continued 
existence (possessed by different persons in very different degrees of 
strength, and by some not at all) to influence our metaphysics of 
mind, so as to support a thesis which would lend itself to that 
wish. For that wish of continued existence may be replaced, and 
perhaps with greater humanity, by resigning our work to others, 
as we are accustomed to do here, when the occasion demands. 


The present current in philosophical thinking, 
so far as the New Realism is concerned, seems 
therefore in the direction of a rather negative at- 
titude toward personal survival after death. While 
this is true, it should also be remembered that 
there are quite a number of realistic or semi- 
realistic pluralists like James Ward and F. C. S. 
Schiller who believe thoroughly in the doctrine of 
personal immortality. 


MODERN PHILOSOPHY AND IMMORTALITY 77 


REFERENCES 


1. Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of Immortality. Lectures 4, 5, 
and 8. 

2. D. Hume, Essays, on Immortality. 

3. H. Spencer, First Principles. Part I. 

4. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic. 

5. A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea. Books 1 
and 2. 

6. B. Spinoza, Ethics. 

7. S. Alexander, Space, Time, and. Deity, Vol. II, page 423. 

8. F. C. 8. Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx. Book 2, Chapter XI. 

9. J. Ward, The Realm of Ends. Lecture 18. 


CHAPTER VII 
MODERN SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


[Pe modern philosophy begins with Descartes, it 
is usually affirmed that modern science begins 
with Francis Bacon. Beyond any question, the 
great Englishman with his emphasis upon induction 
and experiment laid the foundations of later scien- 
tific progress, and yet many years elapsed before 
Bacon’s vision passed into realization. It was not 
until the early part of the nineteenth century that 
our modern scientific age really began. It would 
be tedious to recapitulate the history of the differ- 
ent sciences during the past century nor is such a 
process necessary to our purpose. What we are 
concerned with here is to indicate the bearing of 
the enormous accumulation of scientific material 
during this period upon the problem of personal im- 
mortality. There can be no doubt that science has 
had much to do with regard to the popular view of 
the subject. Perhaps the majority of people who 
disbelieve in immortality today assume such an 
attitude because of what they believe to be scien- 
tific evidence. The best illustration of this fact is 
found in the data concerning the attitude of pres- 
ent day men of science toward the question under 
78 





MODERN SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 79 


discussion, published in Professor James H. 
Leuba’s Lhe Belief in God and Immortality. 
Professor Leuba finds that out of a selected num- 
ber of scientists, 50.7% of the physicists believed 
in immortality and only 37% of the biologists. Of 
the historians, 51.5% believed in a future life and 
50.0% of the sociologists. In the field of psychol- 
ogy, the results were practically negative, only 
19.8% believing in a future life. Of course, Dr. 
Leuba’s figures are not at all conclusive because 
of the circumstances attending the induction, and 
yet they may be regarded as possessing consider- 
able value. Beyond any question, they indicate a 
decidedly negative attitude on the part of many 
present day scientists concerning the subject of 
immortality. 

Francis Bacon himself was thoroughly orthodox 
in his religious views and appears to have enter- 
tained no doubt of personal existence after death. 
In this respect, his example was followed by the 
most eminent of his successors during the next two 
centuries. Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Buffon, 
and the most outstanding names in the early his- 
tory of modern science were believers in the Chris- 
tian doctrine of immortality. The beginning of 
widespread doubt with regard to the accepted 
dogmas of religion on the part of scientific investi- 
gators came with the rapid development of the 
biological and physical sciences in the first half of 


80 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


the nineteenth century. The doctrine of evolution 
especially led to widespread hostility to the ortho- 
dox view. It is doubtless true that a good deal of 
this opposition arose from the mistaken and in- 
temperate attitude of certain ecclesiastical leaders 
toward the new scientific discoveries when the lat- 
ter were first made known to the world. The posi- 
tion of Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer with regard 
to Christianity in general was not made more 
cordial by the attacks of the clergy upon what 
these thinkers considered indisputable scientific 
data. Of course this attitude changed after a time, 
but in many cases the damage done was irrep- 
arable. The present day schism between science 
and religion indicated by the statistics of Professor 
Leuba and others arose in no slight degree from 
the prejudiced hostility of the church toward 
science during the last century and in the deep 


seated resentment of scientists arising from th 
fact. 


There is a certain sense in which it may be sé 
that the publication of the Origin of Species i 
stituted a new era in the history of knowledge 


d 


From the time of Bacon down to that of Darwin — 


we mark a rather definite period in the develop- 
ment of scientific investigation. In this period, 
the idea of induction or of experiment generally 
dominated the thought of the world. Beginning 
with Darwin, a new Idea, as Hegel would put it. 


. 


. 
. 


MODERN SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY SI 


came to light and asserted precedence over all 
others. This Idea was the conception of develop- 
ment. It is not too much to say that the principle 
of evolution has outshadowed all other considera- 
tions in scientific circles during the past half cen- 
tury. It has entered every department of knowl- 
edge: biology, astronomy, sociology, psychology, 
and even philosophy and theology. There can be 
little question but that the principle has been over- 
emphasized as a result of what may be styled its 
extreme fashionableness, but no one will dispute 
the important part that it has played in the his- 
tory of scientific progress. It is difficult to find a 
scientific authority of the present day who does 
not give the theory a large place in his thinking. 
If the early founders of the evolutionary school 
could return to us, they would doubtless feel abun- 


_ dantly satisfied with the results which their teach- 


“ngs have achieved. 


_ From the beginning, the leading protagonists of 
the new dogma of evolution were skeptically in- 
‘clined concerning the doctrine of immortality. Mr. 


Darwin himself was a devout Christian when he 


began his scientific investigations. At the close of 


his life, he assumed a thoroughly agnostic attitude 


: 


toward the major problems of religion including 
immortality. He has borne eloquent testimony to 
the slow and almost imperceptible stages which 
marked the transition from his period of belief to 


82, HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


the period of doubt. The determining factor in 
the entire process was of course hig conviction 
that scientific evolution cut the ground away from 
the current orthodox theology. Like Huxley, he 
was not disposed to assert any positive belief in 
the extinction of personality at the time of death, 
but one infers from his writings that he regarded 
such a result as highly probable. In any event, 
he did not consider the evidence in favor of sur- 
vival as adequate or convincing. Mr. Darwin’s 
attitude told heavily against Christianity with the 
generation which followed him. His outstanding 
reputation as a scientist, his frank and tolerant 
attitude toward all disputed questions, the religious 
background of his earlier years, and his obvious 
desire to adhere to the old forms and teachings 
as far as possible could not but influence his dis- 
ciples profoundly. Huxley’s opposition to the 
church hardly carried so much weight with it be- 
cause there was about it a touch of the forensic, 
but there was nothing of this kind ever associated 
with the name of Darwin. It is true that a number 
of brilhant evolutionists, perhaps the two most 
brilliant after Darwin and Huxley, that is to say 
Wallace and Romanes, adhered sooner or later to 
the Christian viewpoint. Romanes began by going 
much farther than Darwin toward the atheistical 
position, but closed his career a devout son of the 
church. Wallace reached definitely spiritistic con- 
clusions with regard to the nature of man and 


MODERN SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 83 


accepted in thoroughgoing fashion the dogma of 
personal immortality. 


Other leading evolutionists went much farther 
than Darwin or Huxley in their denial of orthodox 
Christian doctrines. Ernest Haeckel, for example, 
developed a philosophy of materialistic monism 
which entirely eliminated all three of the Kantian 
postulates of religion—God, Freedom, and Immor- 
tality. Haeckel in his History of Creation en- 
deavored to outshine the Book of Genesis and had 
no hesitancy about claiming success for his accom- 
plishment. The tendency among scientists at this 
time was clearly in the direction of a thorough- 
going materialism. In psychology, the psycho- 
physical parallelistic theory held general sway, but 
was obviously regarded as only a prelude in most 
eases to an agnostic metaphysic. There were of 
course some spiritualists but the majority were 
either agnostics or materialistic monists. 


A typical representative of the modern material- 
istic attitude may be found in Professor Wilhelm 
Ostwald of the University of Leipzig who gave the 
Ingersoll lecture on Individuality and Immortality 
in 1906. In this interesting and fascinatingly writ- 
ten document, the author in kindly but none the 
less definite fashion does away completely with the 
old idea of personal immortality. There is nothing 
in the scientific world, as he sees it, which even 
hints at the idea of personal survival. All that 


84 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


remains in nature is the inheritance preserved in 
the life of the species, and this is all which Ostwald 
thinks we ought to expect in the case of human 
beings. Moreover, he does not consider immor- 
tality desirable. The author’s personal confession 
is interesting not only because it is typical of so 
much of modern scientific thinking, but also be- 
cause of the distinctly human touch which it pos- 
Sesses: 


Considered from this standpoint (the apparent necessity for the 
feebleness of old age) death is not only not an evil, but it is a 
necessary factor in the existence of the race. And looking into my 
own mind with all the frankness and scientific objectiveness which 
I can apply to the most personal question, I find no horror con- 
nected with the idea of my own death. Of course it is objection- 
able to suffer illness or pain, and there are beside still many things 
which I should like to do or to experience before I die, but this 
would be a loss to me only if I were afterward conscious of it and 
could regret it, and such possibilities seem to be out of the question. 
As to my friends and relations, they will feel my loss the less, the 
older I become. After I have lived out the span of my life, the 
bodily ending will seem a perfectly natural thing, and it will be 
more a feeling of relief than one of sorrow that will come in watch- 
ing the end. 


One must go back to Epicurus with his medita- 
tion upon the beneficence of death to find an ade- 
quate parallel to these words. In fact, there is 
much about the attitude of modern scientific ma- 
terialism which reminds one of the pagan culture 
of the Graeco-Roman period. It is not without 
significance that so keenly responsive a nature as 
that of Walter Pater should have found in the 


MODERN SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 85 


older Epicurean culture the most stimulating re- 
sponse to the promptings of his own age. It is 
interesting in this connection to note that Ostwald 
regards the Kantian view that immortality is 
necessary for the preservation of the moral order 
with complete and almost disdainful skepticism. 
‘*To frighten people into ethical action by threat- 
ening them with eternal punishment is a poor and 
inefficacious way of influencing them,’’ he says. 
The only way to real advancement in the ethical 
world is by the development of habits which will 
enable us to act spontaneously in unselfish ways 
and for the good of humanity as a whole. Moral- 
ity does not need a future life and is indeed better 
off without it. 


Professor William James is perhaps more 
typical of the English and American group of 
scientists than Professor Ostwald. James through- 
out his career preserved an open mind toward the 
question of immortality. In his psychology, he 
fought manfully to secure a foothold for the free- 
dom of the will and in his Ingersoll lecture for 
1897-98 he put up a battle for at least the will to 
believe in a future life. His long and continued 
interest in the problems of psychical research is 
familiar to everyone. He has been quoted by both 
materialists and spiritualists as a supporter 
of their respective doctrines, but the truth seems 
to be that he was never quite able to reach a definite 


86 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


conclusion with regard to the great questions at 
issue. He was not an agnostic, for he believed that 
the problems were not incapable of solution in the 
nature of the case, but simply that they have thus 
far not been solved. He kept an open mind with 
regard to all of them, and apparently passed into 
the unknown without being quite sure just what 
to expect but entirely unafraid and without any 
spirit of pessimism disturbing hig soul. 

There is a tendency at the present time to re- 
gard the doctrine of evolution as distinctly help- 
ful to a rational view of immortality. We shall 
discuss this point of view in a chapter especially 
devoted to it a little later. The current would seem 
to be running more directly toward this attitude 
during recent years. On the whole, however, the 
modern scientific movement can scarcely be said 
to have contributed toward the encouragement of 
the Christian doctrine of immortality. Neverthe- 
less there are many indications that science will 
yet become an efficient factor in fostering a living 
faith in a future existence. 


REFERENCES 


. Leuba, The Belief in God and Immortality, Part IT. 

. W. Ostwald, Individuality and Immortality, pp. 62, 63. 
. W. James, Human Immortality, pp. 3, 4, 42-45. 

. G. J. Romanes, Thoughts on Religion. 

. T. H. Huxley, Life and Letters, Vol. II. 


Cle GO DO 


ii a i 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE PROOFS FROM PSYCHICAL 
RESEARCH 


NE phase of scientific development has un- 

questionably furnished a new interest in the 
subject of immortality. We refer to the investiga- 
tions of the Society for Psychical Research con- 
cerning which there has been so much discussion 
during recent years. An organization which has 
included in its membership men like Henry Sidg- 
wick, William James, A. J. Balfour, Sir Oliver 
Lodge, Sir William Crookes, F. W. H. Myers, and 
many others scareely less emiment, assuredly de- 
mands some respect on the part of those who are 
not hopelessly prejudiced in favor of a particular 
hypothesis. While this is correct, it must be con- 
fessed that the results obtained by the psychical 
researchers appear to be singularly inconclusive 
concerning the problems raised in their discus- 
sions. It is true that some men like Professor 
Hyslop, F. W. H. Myers, Sir Oliver Lodge, Arthur 
Conan Doyle, and others have become thoroughly 
convineed of the spiritistic hypothesis. The argu- 
ments which have converted these thinkers un- 
fortunately seem singularly unconvincing to many 


other minds. 
87 


88 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


Since the Great War the public has been deluged 
with spiritualistic literature purporting to furnish 
evidence of communications ‘‘from the other side.”’ 
Perhaps the most notable of these volumes is the 
Raymond of Sir Oliver Lodge. This book has 
received wide circulation and has been read with 
sympathetic interest by many people who cannot 
accept its conclusions. It purports to contain mes- 
sages from the author’s son who was killed in 
France during the war, together with certain com- 
ments and conclusions concerning the life to come 
on the part of Sir Oliver himself. The thorough- 
going manner in which the author accepts the 
validity of his hypothesis concerning the life be- 
yond is apparent throughout the book. Take, for 
example, words like these: 

I am convinced of continued existence on the other side of death 
as I am of existence here. It may be said, you cannot be as sure 
as you are of sensory experience. I say I can. A physicist is 
never limited to direct sensory impressions, he has to deal with a 
multitude of conceptions and things, for which he has no physical 
organ, the dynamical theory of heat, for instance, and of gases, the 
theories of electricity, of magnetism, of chemical affinity, of cohe- 
sion, aye, and his apprehension of the ether itself, lead him into 
regions where sight and hearing and touch are impotent as direct 
witnesses, where they are no longer efficient guides. In such regions 


everything has to be interpreted in terms of the insensible, the 
apparently unsubstantial, and in a definite sense, the imaginary. 


In other words, the hypothetical data of the 
sciences in their search for the explanation of phys- 
ical phenomena appear so unsubstantial and so 
imaginary that the communications of spiritistic 


THE PROOFS FROM PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 89 


mediums are not incredible. The various doctrines 
held by orthodox scientists concerning the structure 
of atoms, electrons, and the ether seem to Sir 
Oliver to be quite as unsubstantial as the spirit of 
Raymond. Paradoxical as it may appear, it is 
frequently true that the most thoroughgoing gcien- 
tific investigators are at least as credulous as are 
the theologians themselves. 


Frederic W. H. Myers in his two bulky volumes 
entitled Human Personality and Its Survival of 
Bodily Death has doubtless made out the best 
case for the psychical research movement. Mr. 
Myers has brought together such an enormous 
mass of material that it appears overwhelming 
from the standpoint of the number of witnesses. 
The evidence was apparently conclusive to the 
author of the book himself and produced definite 
conviction concerning the reality of personal sur- 
vival. It has doubtless had the same effect upon a 
certain proportion of its readers whose minds were 
especially open to the reception of this kind of 
testimony. On the other hand, even the most de-- 
voted admirers of Mr. Myers, and the writer con-” 
fesses himself to be one, will scarcely claim that 
his work has had any very pronounced influence 
in convineing the bulk of people that the soul sur- 
vives bodily dissolution. For a long time, Pro- 
fessor J. H. Hyslop believed that if he could secure 
an appropriation of a million dollars from Con- 


90 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


gress he could demonstrate upon the basis of 
scientific evidence and beyond the possibility of a 
reasonable doubt that the human spirit is im- 
mortal. The members of Congress remained un- 
convineed despite the vast issues at stake and re- 
fused to make the appropriation. No doubt most 
of them believed that the money could only be 
applied toward gathering a bulk of testimony re- 
sembling the material collected by Mr. Myers and 
possessing no more evidential value. Under the 
circumstances they doubtless regarded themselves 
as justified in confining their appropriations to the 
purely material field. 


Outside of the members of the American and 
Hnglish Societies for Psychical Research, scientists 
as a rule have rigidly tabooed the spiritualistic 
theory. Professor Munsterberg said before his 
death that the evidential facts alleged by psychical 
research not only do not exist, but can never exist. 
Professor A. EK. Taylor of the British Academy 
asserts that the solution of the mediumistic phenom- 
ena must either be fraud or telepathy or, if these 
theories break down, possible demoniacal posses- 
sion. Professor Leuba in The Belief in God and 
Immortality devotes several pages to proving the 
fraudulent character of the spiritualistic phe- 
nomena. He refers especially to the complete 
exposé of Eusapia Palladino at Columbia Univer- 
sity in 1910. He also criticises rather freely the 


—) > 


THE PROOFS FROM PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 91 


proots of survival through what is called ‘‘cross- 
correspondence.’’ His solution appears to be that 
telepathy is quite as satisfactory an explanation 
of the facts as is needed. One gathers from his 
general position, however, that the telepathic hy- 
pothesis is scarcely more agreeable to him than 
the existence of spirits. The fact is that from a 
scientific point of view telepathy is hardly more 
credible than straight out spiritualism. Doctor 
Leuba justly criticises the unsatisfactory character 
of the future life as brought out in the mediumistic 
reports. He says: 


Whether the results of the S. P. R. are regarded as proving sur- 
vival or not, it must be admitted that no amount of ingenuity in 
explanation and no optimism ean hide the unattractiveness of the 
glimpses that may have been caught of the other life: there is no 
hint in these glimpses of any glorification, nor, for that matter, of 
any retribution. That other world would come much closer to a 
realization of the primary than of the modern conception of con- 
tinuation. The disincarnate souls appear on the whole as enfeebled_ 
and inefficient replicas of earthly beings. This is not the kind of 
continuation which the modern world desires; it lacks the essential 
features of the Christian conception of immortality. 


The great objection to the whole spiritualistic 
program so far as evidence of survival is con- 
cerned appears to he precisely at the point where 
Professor Leuba hag criticised it. As some one 
has said, if we are all to become driveling idiots 
as soon as we cross the border into eternity, the 
prospect is so unappealing that we naturally hesi- 
tate about believing that such a catastrophe can 


92 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


be true. If William James, for example, talked 
as badly during his lifetime as the mediums have 
made him talk since his death, he would never have 
achieved his reputation as a master of English 
thought and style. It is impossible to point to a 
single significant. contribution concerning the 
nature of the future life which has been obtained 
by spiritistic means. What information might 
otherwise appear significant is of such contradic- 
tory character that it loses its value. The spirits 
who furnish ‘‘news’’ concerning the life beyond 
do not agree as to the character of that life and 
their statements are so vague and at times so child- 
ish as to become little short of disgusting. Of 
course efforts have been made to account for this 
situation, since the days of Myers, by the assump- 
tion that the spirits themselves are not at their 
best when they are communicating with earthly 
beings and that the difficulties of ‘‘ getting across’’ 
are such that only the most confused and garbled 
reports can be secured. This explanation seems 
inadequate to many minds. The conversations 
which men like James, Hodgson and others are 
reported to have carried on through spiritualistic 
mediums are so unlike what their friends would 
normally anticipate that they can scarcely be re- 
garded as garbled representations of a genuine 
original. One can hardly see how the material 
attributed to some of these men could ever have 
possessed the remotest connection with their think- 


THE PROOFS FROM PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 93 


ing. Had the communications from the other side 
been of such a character as to harmonize with the 
earthly personalities of those from whom they 
have purported to come, it would make a strong 
argument for the spiritistic hypothesis. Unfortu- 
nately for the theory, however, the argument in the 
main appears to be negative. 


Of course some of the phenomena cited by 
Myers, Hyslop and others appear difficult to ex- 
plain on any naturalistic hypothesis. Mr. Randall 
in his recent work on the significance of psychical 
research entitled The New Light on Immortality 
concedes that all the phenomena so far known 
may eventually be explained ‘‘on some theory of 
telepathy or mind reading, or through the activity 
of psychic powers in man whose nature or opera- 
tions are not yet understood. On this theory all 
these phenomena, even the most mysterious and 
baffling at present, would ultimately be reduced to 
purely psychic phenomena with which discarnate 
intelligences have nothing whatever to do.’’ Mr. 
Randall himself does not accept this interpreta- 
tion, being inclined to the spiritualistic hypothesis 
accepted by Myers and Hyslop. Nevertheless, he 
concedes that the case is still doubtful, at least 
from the standpoint of many intelligent people. 
He believes that future investigation will definitely 
turn the balance in favor of spiritism, but acknowl- 


~ 


94. HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


edges that hig views in this respect are matters 
of faith rather than demonstration. 


More than a quarter of a century ago Mr. 
Thomas Jay Hudson attacked the reality of spirit 
communications and claimed that all psychic 
phenomena of the spiritistic type could be ex- 
plained on the basis of telepathy. It is interest- 
ing to note his conclusion as presented in his book 
entitled A Scientific Demonstration of the Future 
Infe written in 1895. He says: 

My proposition is that psychic phenomena properly interpreted, 
including that which they attribute to disembodied spirits, furnish 
indubitable evidence of a future life, and that the only interpreta- 


tion which science can give to such phenomena is that they emanate 
from the living psychic, and never from disembodied spirits. 


It would be easy to cite multitudinous cases of 
extraordinary and bizarre circumstances from the 
volumes of Myers, Hyslop, Barrett, Flammarion, 
and many others, which tend to prove the reality 
of spiritistic phenomena. These data, however, do 
not make out a clear case for survival, as we have 
already seen, and our space limitations are such 
that it appears unnecessary to quote them. After 
reading the documentary evidence with sym- 
pathetic interest, the writer at least is inclined to 
say with William James: 


I have been tempted at times to believe that the Creator has 
eternally intended this department of nature to remain baffling, to 
prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicions all in equal meas- 
ure, so that, although ghosts and clairvoyances, and raps and mes- 


THE PROOFS FROM PSYCHICAL RESEARCH O45 


sages from spirits are always seeming to exist and can never be 
fully explained away, they also seem never to be susceptible of full 
corroboration. 


On the whole, it would seem that a certain con- 
tribution toward the solution of the problem of 
immortality from a scientific standpoint has been 
made by the students of psychic phenomena. 
Nevertheless with a few exceptions the most ard- 
ent of these students will scarcely claim that they 
have solved the problem. Perhaps, as James sur- 
mised, it will take centuries to reach a solution on 
the basis of psychic investigation. In any event, 
up to the present time the matter remains one of 
faith rather than one of scientific demonstration. 


~The Psychical Researchers, we are inclined to 
believe, have helped to sustain faith in the fact 
of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. There are 
so many points in common between the spiritistic 
phenomena collected by Myers and Hyslop and the 
Seripture record of the Appearances during the 
Forty Days that the interest aroused in the one 
group has led to renewed interest in the other. 
However we may explain the later evidence, it cer- 
tainly tends to make the earlier more intelligible 
to the modern mind. As the writer sees the matter, 
this is the most important contribution which 
psychic research has made to Christianity. Not 
a few people whose faith in the Resurrection had 
become dim have had it strengthened and renewed 


96 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


by reading the evidence furnished in the ponderous 
volumes of the proceedings of the Society for 
Psychical Research. 


REFERENCES 


1. F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality and Its Survival of 
Bodily Death. 

2. O. Lodge, Raymond. 

3. T. J. Hudson, A Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life, 
Chapters III, IV, and V. 

4. Leuba, The Belief in God and Immortality, Part I, Chapter 
VI. 

5. Randall, The New Light on Immortality, Chapter IV. 

6. A. W. Martin, Faith in a Future Life, Chapter VI. 

7. S. McComb, The Future Life in the Light of Modern In- 
quiry, Chapter VIIT. 

8. B. King, The Abolishing of Death, Chapters I and II. 


CHAPTER IX 


THEOSOPHY AND THE DOCTRINE OF 
KARMA 


N° study of the future life would be in any 

sense complete without some reference to the 
so-called doctrine of Karma and to theories of 
metempsychosis in general. We have already re- 
ferred to the views of transmigration and pre- 
existence held by the Greek philosophers and by 
certain of the early Christian theologians. These 
views have come down from very ancient sources 
and are still held by perhaps a majority of the 
human family. The origin of the idea appears to 
be quite simple. Certain family resemblances sug- 
gested to the primitive mind the idea that a child 
was the incarnation of its father or of some one 
of its ancestors. Moreover, in the early stages of 
development the savage mind was quick to detect 
fancied resemblances to animals on the part of 
children, and was prone to account for such re- 
semblances on the basis of transmigration. Tylor, 
Frazer, and others have called attention to in- 
stances of this kind. The totemistic theory is 
closely related to the same point of view. The idea 
of the totem was that of a mystical blood brother- 
hood with some animal which was looked upon as 

97 


98 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


the ancestor of the clan and as a guardian spirit im 
times of trial and of need. According to the totem 
theory when a member of the tribe died, his spirit 
was supposed to go back to the clan totem and to 
assume its appearance and shape as an animal. 
The transition from such a view to the ordinary 
doctrine of metempyschosis is quite easy. In any 
event, from whatever source or sources the trans- 
migration theory may have come, nothing is more 
certain than the fact that we find it present in the 
oldest traces of religion and of civilization which 
have come down to us. 

The doctrine of transmigration found place in 
the religions of the East and has held uninter- 
rupted sway over most of them since the time of 
the origin of Buddhism, about 600 B. C. As Dr. 
Cave and others have shown, the teaching is not 
found in the old Vedic religions which preceded 
the later Indian cults. From the older point of 
view, the soul passed after death to a somewhat 
crudely fashioned heaven or hell quite in line with 
later Western views. The present day doctrine of 
the future was introduced into the Hindu religions 
through the Upanishads. It is here that we find 
the first expression of Karma, an Oriental word 
which means ‘‘work’’ or ‘‘deed’’ and which ex- 
presses the idea that a man must continually reap 
that which he sows. Every action carries with it 
its own penalty and there is no possibility of 
separating the two. No more rigid doctrine of 


THEOSOPHY AND THE DOCTRINE OF KARMA 99 


retribution is conceivable, and no more complete 
embodiment of what is sometimes called ‘‘the law 
of the harvest’’ has ever been fashioned by the 
human mind. Every man, from the standpoint of 
Karma, becomes his own judge and passes sentence 
upon his own life. Moreover, the place where the 
sentence is carried out is not in some shadowy 
other world, but in this same human life where 
the original deed was committed. The only dif- 
ference is that the expiation is carried on through 
successive reincarnations which afford ample time 
and opportunity for complete retribution. In these 
various stages through which the spirit passes, it 
is not immediately conscious of its previous exist- 
ence, but nevertheless the character which it pos- 
sesses has come down unimpaired from the earlier 
level of hfe. The Buddhist teaching elaborates 
this law in minute detail. Tylor in his Primitive 
Culture gives numerous illustrations of the de- 
tailed manner in which the interpreters of Karma 
explain the operation of the law: 


The stealer of food shall be dyspeptic, the scandal monger shall 
have foul breath, the horse stealer shall go lame. Stealers of grain 
and meats shall turn into rats and vultures, the thief who took 
dyed garments or perfumes shall become a red partridge or a musk- 
rat. . . . . When good King Bunsari’s feet were burned and 
rubbed with salt by command of his cruel son, that he might not 
walk, why was the torture inflicted on a man so holy? Because in 
a previous birth he had walked near a dagoba with his slippers on, 
and had trodden on priest’s carpet without washing his feet. 


100 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


Of course the doctrine of Karma has held its 
sway primarily because it appears to present some 
moral justification for the apparent inequalities of 
human experience. The never-ending question 
concerning the sufferings of the righteous and of 
the innocent 1s answered by saying that they were 
not righteous or innocent in some earlier existence 
and are now only atoning for their misdeeds of the 
past. At the time when the Titanic crashed into 
an iceberg in the mid-Atlantic and caused the loss 
of many hundreds of lives, the modern Theoso- 
phists explained the sufferings of those who went 
down with the vessel or who perished by cold and 
exhaustion in the ocean on the basis of the law of 
Karma. The writer distinctly remembers a lec- 
turer who belonged to the movement above men- 
tioned elaborating in detail the explanation that 
however innocent the numerous victims of the 
disaster might appear to us, their fate proved that 
in some previous existence they must have been 
guilty of some sin or sins which had to be expiated 
in relentless fashion in the present life. The ex- 
planation appealed to many of his hearers even 
in a typical western audience. 


The supreme objection to the whole theory of 
Karma, as Professor Pringle-Pattison has clearly 
shown, consists in the fact that it does not satisfy 
the demands of justice. The retribution which it 
furnishes is after all only formal or imaginary. 


THEOSOPHY AND THE DOCTRINE OF KARMA 10] 


Unless there is memory of the previous existences 
in one definite self-consciousness which binds them 
together there is no possible morality involved in 
the process of transmigration. The Karma which 
is carried over from one life to another retains 
no identity if memory or self-consciousness is de- 
stroyed. On this basis, it has as little meaning 
or value as the old soul substance which David 
Hume so mercilessly ridicules in his essays. There 
ig no possible justice or morality involved in B 
experiencing a Karma carried over from a previ- 
ous existence, which we may designate as A, un- 
less B knows this previous existence as his own 
and the Karma as properly belonging to him. It 
is of the essence of the doctrine of Karma, how- 
ever, that no such consciousness is possible. It is 
the unconscious Karma which gives point to the 
theory. At the same time it is this unconscious 
feature which totally destroys its moral signif- 
icance. A parallel in actual life would be the 
punishment of an individual for some offense com- 
mitted during or before a total amnesia. What- 
ever the crime might have been, it would mean 
nothing to the person out of whose memory it had 
passed entirely and he could only think of himself 
as punished for something which had no connection 
with his character. Modern conceptions of justice 
would not approve a penalty of this kind if the 
facts were clearly established. 


102 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


The theory of metempsychosis has always pos- 
sessed attraction for a certain type of mind and 
some modern authors have tried to rehabilitate it 
during recent years. One naturally thinks of Wil- 
liam Wordsworth, of Cardinal Newman, and of 
other nineteenth century poets. In the realm of 
philosophy, one of its foremost advocates has been 
Mr. F. C. S. Schiller who in his Riddles of the 
Sphinw has worked out a metaphysical solution 
of reality which carries with it the idea of the con- 
stantly recurring incarnations of a plurality of 
spirits whose interactions have produced the uni- 
verse aS we know it. Mr. Schiller defends the idea 
of pre-existence with rare dialectical skill but his 
arguments remain unconvineing to most of us. 
The old Socratic or Platonic proofs have been 
destroyed by modern psychologists and there ap- 
pears to be no valid foundation for constructing 
a new argument. The whole theory is purely 
speculative and depends for its popularity upon a 
surface conception of retribution. When we go 
beneath the surface, as has been indicated, the 
moral appeal of the doctrine is entirely lost. The 
sort of justice which punishes one individual for 
the misdeeds of another, and this is what the 
system comes to when it is reduced to essential 
facts, makes no appeal to the modern conscience. 
Such retribution is not in reality retribution at all. 
It is not the doctrine, as has sometimes been said, 


THEOSOPHY AND THE DOCTRINE OF KARMA 103 


that whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap, but rather what one man sows another man 
shall surely reap. The fact that the latter state- 
ment contains an element of truth does not affect 
its significance as a moral proposition. Children 
do undoubtedly suffer for the sins of their parents, 
but it cannot be said that there is any special 
moral significance attached to the process. 
Notwithstanding the essential non-morality, from 
the higher point of view, of the doctrine of Karma, 
we find it asserted in the writings of not a few 
present day thinkers. The Theosophical Society 
has popularized the theory and has introduced it 
to many Christians. Mrs. Anne Besant, for ex- 
ample, defines Karma as ‘‘the law of action and 
reaction.’’ She is quite enthusiastic in her state- 
ment of the moral value of the doctrine. To her 
it is a true gospel, since it ‘‘makes an end of 
despair, encourages effort, cheers with the 
proclamation of final success, and insures the 
permanence of every fragment of good in us.’’ 
She continues further: | 


Its value as an explanation of life is untold. The criminal, the 
lowest and vilest, the poorest, foulest specimen of our race, is only 
a baby soul, coming into a savage body, and thrown into a civiliza- 
tion for which he is unfit if left to follow his own instincts. 

The knowledge of reincarnation shows us how the social instincts 
have evolved, why self sacrifice is the law of evolution for man, 
how we may plan out our own future evolution under natural laws. 
It teaches us that qualities evolved from earthly experience are 


104. HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


returned to earth for the service of man, and how every effort 
brings its full result under unerring law. 


Karma is a Law of Nature, it compels the ignorant, but it gives 
freedom to the wise. The three subsidiary expressions of it that 
bear most on our destiny are, ‘‘Thought builds character’’; ‘‘ De- 
sire attracts its object and creates opportunity for grasping it’’; 
““ Action causes a favorable or unfavorable environment according 
as it has brought happiness or unhappiness to others.’’ 


Mrs. Besant stresses the idea that Karma is 
simply a natural law which, lke other natural 
laws, has no moral quality in itself, but can be 
used either for good or for evil in accordance with 
the judgments and purpose of individuals. This 
idea is at variance with the usual interpretation of 
the doctrine which makes it the incarnation of jus- 
tice and a definite embodiment of the moral order 
of the universe. The advocates of Karma do not 
manifest any great consistency in the logie which 
they use to reach their conclusions. Some of them, 
in fact, contradict directly the statements of 
others. Professor Pringle-Pattison hag called at- 
tention to the fact that Alger in his History of 
the Doctrine of a Future Life argues for the rein- 
carnation position on the ground that every suffer- 
ing we endure is the consequence of the deeds of 
others, and not of our own faults, and on this 
account parallels the idea with that of the Chris- 
tian doctrine of the atonement. This is of course 
the exact opposite of the ordinary interpretation 
of Karma which embodies the idea that every soul 
suffers precisely, as Miss Dougall says, ‘‘accord- 


THEOSOPHY AND THE DOCTRINE OF KARMA 105 


ing to its sins and no one suffers for the sing of 
another.’’ We thus have Karma advocated as a 
purely individual law and also as a principle of 
atonement for others; as the universal moral law 
of the world and as a natural law which is es- 
sentially non-moral. Amid contradictions such as 
these it is difficult to see how the doctrine can make 
any serious appeal to present day thought levels. 
Miss Lily Dougall in her essay on Reimcarnation, 
Karma, and Theosophy discusses the problem of 
Karma in detail and reaches the following con- 
clusion: 

The law of Karma candidly considered offends the instinct of 
justice in any healthy mind that believes in God. The fact that 
Christian thinkers have often taught as crude and cruel a doctrine 
of the Divine government of the world does not make the law of 
Karma, as expounded by Theosophy more just. It portrays hor- 
rible injustice on the part of a Divine Power, who binds fallible 
men upon the wheel of time and offers them no excuse but by toil- 


some effort and the fire of suffering, while He Himself holds aloof 
both from effort and suffering. 


On the whole, the teaching of Karma and the 
Theosophical position generally appear to be a re- 
versal rather than an advance in one’s thinking 
concerning the future life. Doubtless they embody 
a primitive effort to solve the problem of evil 
and as such deserve a certain degree of respectful 
consideration. The advance in scientific knowl- 
edge, however, has made such solutions incredible, 
and as Miss Dougall has said, there is no particular 
reason for a healthy minded person to regret the 


106 HORIZONS: OF IMMORTALITY 


outcome. The doctrine of Karma is after all only 
a feature of that fundamental pessimism which 
characterizes the typically Oriental view of the 
universe. 


REFERENCES 


1. Pringle-Pattison, . The Idea of Immortality, Lecture VI. 

2. A. Besant, Theosophy (People’s Books), p. 60-61. 

3. Tylor, Primitive Culture, II, 15. 

4. B. H. Streeter, Immortality, Chapter VIII. 

5. F. C. 8. Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx, Book III, Chapters 
XI and XII. 


CHAPTER X 
EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY 


KX have already referred to the influence of 

the theory of organic evolution upon the be- 
lief in immortality. Considered as a whole, there 
ean be little doubt but that this influence has tended 
toward disbelief or, in any event, toward doubt 
rather than toward belief in conscious survival 
after death. Certainly this was true in the cases 
of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Clifford, Haeckel and 
numerous other scientists of the period. Begin- 
ning with John Fiske and Henry Drummond, how- 
ever, there has grown up a school of evolutionary 
thought which finds definite promise of personal 
immortality in the nature and history of organic 
evolution. A considerable number of recent writers 
have advocated this theory and it appears to be 
definitely gaining ground. Professor Pringle-Pat- 
tison, Professor James Y. Simpson, and other rep- 
resentatives of the Scottish school of thought have 
been especially enthusiastic over the idea. An ex- 
cellent illustration of the position taken by these 
men may also be found in the essay entitled ‘* The 
Mind and the Brain’’ by Doctor J. A. Hadfield 
published in Canon Streeter’s well-known volume 
on Immortality. 

107 


108 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


Doctor Hadfield in the essay above mentioned 
reviews the different theories of the relation of 
mind and body now prevalent and proclaims his 
definite adherence to the thoroughgoing evolution 
of mind. It may be worth while to quote the con- 
clusion which he reaches in his own language: 


We may now summarize the stages of the evolution of the mind. 
There are, of course, countless other intermediate stages but it is 
sufficient for us to have mentioned the most important,— 


(1) In the first stage, that illustrated in the amoeba, we have 
as yet no conclusive proof of the presence of a mind, except per- 
haps in the sense of a pervading mind, passive and impersonal, a 
part of the cosmic mind working in and through the primitive 
creature. 

(2) In the second stage, we have the animals which possess a 
nervous system, whose actions are controlled by the flow of nerve 
energy or neurokyme. 

(3) In the third stage, we have those animals in which incoming 
sensations have developed a centre for sensations, the central nerv- 
ous system, where nerve energy is stored, and from which it is dis- 
charged by regularly constituted channels, and in response to spe- 
cially strong stimuli. 

(4) In the final stage, sensations are raised to a high pitch of 
intensity and in some unknown way produce a psychic form of 
energy we call consciousness. In this stage, also, the organism not 
only has a store of nerve energy, but possesses the power of direct- 
ing that energy at will into any channel which leads to the fulfill- 
ment of its conscious purposes. : 

The body thus appears to have produced what it can no longer 
control, nor even understand; and evolution has brought forth the 
flower and glory of its age-long development. 


Doctor Hadfield does not claim that science has 
demonstrated immortality or that the theory of 
evolution necessarily leads to the conclusion which 


EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY 109 


he indicates. He is concerned, much after the man- 
ner of William James, simply with showing that 
science does not make it impossible for one to be- 
heve in immortality and in fact leads to the belief 
that such a conclusion is probable. The whole 
process of evolution is a pathway upward and it 
would seem that the next step is the survival of 
the spirit after death. Of course until more evi- 
dence is forthcoming no scientist would affirm that 
this situation actually obtains as a proved fact, 
but he is at perfect liberty to affirm that the trend 
of the scientific data which he possesses leads in 
the direction of immortality and gives strong 
ground for believing that at some time definite 
proof will be secured to substantiate such an 
hypothesis. To use his own words, ‘‘ For the pres- 
ent, therefore, so far as science is concerned, life 
after the grave is not a proved fact, but the evi- 
dence is sufficient to justify faith in it.’’ This 
faith, the author says further, is nothing more than 
the religious counterpart of the hypothetical 
method of the scientist. All scientific laws are 
hypotheses and involve the element of faith. The 
theologian’s belief in immortality is lhkewise an 
hypothesis and is justified upon the basis of the 
facts thus far discovered. Of course future in- 
vestigation may definitely discredit the hypothesis, 
but so far as we can see at present the evidence 
is all in the other direction. At this point the 


110 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


author of course diverges widely from the position 
held by a scientist like Professor Ostwald and 
others of the same school whose conclusions have 
been referred to in an earlier chapter. 

The most recent and thoroughgoing plea for 
what may be styled the evolutionary argument for 
immortality is that of Professor Simpson of New 
College, Edinburgh, in his volume entitled, Man 
and the Attainment of Immortality. After trac- 
ing in elaborate detail the history of the evolution 
of man, Professor Simpson reaches the conclusion 
that freedom is attained as a result of the process 
and that this freedom is the harbinger of immor- 
tality. He deals specifically with the Scriptural 
doctrine of survival and boldly asserts that the 
Bible teaches that continuity of personal existence 
is morally conditioned or to use his own language, 
‘‘that man is immortable rather than immortal.’’ 
In somewhat hurried fashion and yet considerably 
in detail, he reviews the Hebrew doctrine of Sheol 
and the New Testament teaching concerning eternal 
life. He concludes that Jesus nowhere unequivo- 
cally teaches the immortality of the soul. The 
expression itself, he says, ‘‘is not a Biblical phrase, 
is not even a Biblical conception.’’? Eternal life 
with him is something to be won or attained and 
is not a natural inheritance. A man’s life may be 
lost, ‘‘he may be mulcted of his soul.’? Moreover 
the teaching of Jesus is not directly connected - 


EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY Lit 


with any question of rewards and punishments. 
Statements in the Gospel which appear to possess 
this connotation are largely secondary if not late 
additions. Professor Simpson quotes Dr. Shar- 
man to the effect that Jesus never used the word 
Gehenna in any other sense than its literal mean- 
ing as the Valley of Hinnom. Wherever any other 
sense is required, the comparative study of docu- 
ments shows that this sense is derived by subse- 
quent modification of the original words of Jesus. 
The statement of the rich young ruler, ‘‘Good Mas- 
ter, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’’ to- 
gether with the answer of Jesus assumes that 
eternal life is a morally conditioned survival or 
continuation of being. 

In dealing with the fourth gospel, Professor 
Simpson stresses the statement of Jesus that He 
is the Resurrection and the life and that eternal 
life is therefore a present possession rather than 
something to be acquired in the future. Likewise 
in discussing the Pauline theology, the same point 
of view is emphasized. For St. Paul, salvation is 
a process. Life begins here and goes on without 
a break. In none of Paul’s writings, ‘‘is there any 
suggestion of a resurrection of the wicked.’’ St. 
Paul never distinguishes between physical and 
moral destruction. Professor Simpson concedes 
that there are a few passages in the Pauline and 
Lucan writings which are contrary to his inter- 


112 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


pretation. This is especially true of Acts 24:14, 
15. Such passages are best understood as expan- 
sions of the original data. The other New Testa- 
ment writers all contribute to the same conclusion. 
Immortality is the result of conscious union with 
God and can come only through such union. If 
we take into account the main line of argument 
which runs thronghout the New Testament, there 
ean be no doubt, from the author’s point of view, 
that the future life is dependent upon our union 
with the divine life in our present material exist- 
ence. Jesus explained His own being in this way 
and obviously intended for His followers to em- 
body the same truth. To quote Professor Simp- 
son’s own words: 


Yet our Lord’s own explanation of His life was that it was one 
with the life of God—that He so lived and moved and had His 
being in God that their character and purposes were one. That 
was the secret of His life, according to Himself—not a Virgin 
birth. Our Lord Himself never gave that reason, never hinted at it. 


Professor Pringle-Pattison in his recent Gifford 
lectures, to which we have already referred a num- 
ber of times, adopts substantially the position of 
Professor Simpson. He reviews in detail the his- 
tory of the idea of immortality, tracing its earliest 
appearance in the animistic traditions of primitive 
man and bringing it down to the most recent 
period. He shows how the Christian view arose 
upon the basis of the gospel records and the writ- 
ings of Paul as interpreted through the medium of 


EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY 113 


Greek philosophy. In thoroughly iluminating 
fashion, he interprets the Platonic and Aristo- 
telian doctrines concerning the future life and then 
proceeds to show how the idea of a soul substance 
came down from the Middle Age period into 
modern philosophy. The absurdity of the theory 
to Professor Pringle-Pattison’s mind has been 
thoroughly demonstrated by numerous writers be- 
ginning with David Hume. In a previous chapter, 
we have dealt with this subject considerably in de- 
tail. The Buddhistic doctrine of reincarnation and 
Karma comes in for some very trenchant criticism 
as well as the absolutist views of Professors Brad- 
ley and Bosanquet. Throughout the rapid review 
of the various theories treated in the volume there 
is the clearest and most balanced judgment mani- ’ 
fested on the part of the author. Nothing could 
be more admirable than the manner in which the 
entire subject is discussed. 

With regard to Professor Pringle-Pattison’s in- 
dividual conclusions upon the subject, it is interest- 
ing to note that they are practically identical with 
the view expressed in his earlier series of Gifford 
lectures upon the idea of God. He does not think 
that the question of personal survival is as signif- 
icant as many religious and philosophical authori- 
ties have declared. For example, he deprecates 
Martin Luther’s statement, ‘‘If you believe in no 
future life, I would not give a mushroom for your 
God. Do then as you like. For, if no God, then 


114 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


no devil, no hell. As with a fallen tree, all is over 
when you die. Then plunge into lechery, rascality, 
robbery, and murder.’’ He also repeats the illus- 
tration in his earlier Gifford lectures from the life 
of Tennyson in which the great English poet is 
said to have exclatrmed, red with excitement, that 
if immortality is not true, ‘‘no God but a mocking 
fiend created us,’’ and that if he believed this he 
would ‘‘sink his head tonight in a chloroformed 
handkerchief and have done with it all.’’ Pringle- 
Pattison comments upon this statement to the ef- 
fect that no attitude could be more irreligious. 
From his point of view, morality is quite inde- 
pendent of any such considerations and he appears 
to think that religion might get along without them 
too, as it did in the Old Testament period for so 
many years. Nevertheless, in the main the argu- 
ment of the book is a distinct plea for personal 
immortality. The author grounds his faith in a 
future life upon the nature of God as love and the 
apparent improbability of the Divine Being allow- 
ing his children to pass into nothingness after 
having called them into existence. In rather 
guarded fashion, he proclaims the doctrine of im- 
mortability, as Professor Simpson styles it, ar- 
guing that immortality must be attained and will 
not be thrust upon those who are unwilling to 
achieve it or who care nothing for it. In the con- 
cluding section of his book, he contrasts the two 


a 


EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY 115 


opposite positions of Plato and Spinoza with re- 
gard to the extent of consideration which should 
be given to the problem of death. The wise man, 
according to the great Athenian philosopher, is 
the one who has constantly before him the certainty 
of death, while the modern philosopher says that 
there is nothing which the truly wise man will 
think about so little as his approaching demise. 
Something can be said for both points of view, 
but on the whole the preference must be given to 
the later rather than to the earlier thinker. Life 
is best spent in the discharge of the present duty 
and without overmuch concern as to the question 
of future reward. If we have entered into the 
divine life while here, we may be well assured 
that we shall be sharers in that life hereafter. 
There is something fine about the concluding para- 
graph of the book: 

If we are occupied with thoughts immortal and divine or with 
some great cause which means for us the kingdom of God on earth, 
or, for the matter of that, in doing anything that we feel is worth 
doing, we have neither time nor inclination to brood over our per- 
sonal future. Our life is full of these objective interests. So death 
should find us; and to a mind so attuned physical death ought to 
appear no more than an incident in life, an event to be accepted as 
naturally as sleep. It should bring with it no suggestion of finality, 
nor do we find that it really does so in those who thus live. Unbe- 


lief in death, it has been said, seems to be the necessary character- 
istic or concomitant of true spiritual life. 


Another thinker of the Scottish school, the late 
Sir Henry Jones, in his Gifford series published 


116 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


under the title, A Faith That Enqures, takes 
substantially the same position as Professor 
Pringle-Pattison. Immortality to him is directly 
bound up with a belief in the goodness of the Ab- 
solute and one genuine failure of the good in any 
single life would mean a failure of the divine pur- 
pose. Denial of the immortality of the soul be- 
comes therefore from his point of view an assertion 
of absolute skepticism. Sir Henry concedes that 
there are problems connected with the relation of 
the finite to the Absolute which are for the present 
insoluble, but at all costs maintains his faith in 
God, freedom, and immortality. 


REFERENCES 


1. B. H. Streeter, Immortality, Chapter IT. 

2. J. Y. Simpson, Man and the Attainment of Immortality, 
Chapters XI, XII and XIII. 

3. Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of Immortality, Chapter X. 

4. H. Jones, A Faith That Enquires, Lecture 19. 


CHAPTER XI 
THE SURRENDER OF IMMORTALITY 


et the beginning of the present study, we re- 
ferred to the fact that Count Tolstoi and cer- 
tain other followers of Jesus Christ accept the 
position that the Christian religion does not re- 
quire an acceptance of the doctrine of personal 
survival. These men for the most part make no 
claim to fellowship with orthodox Christianity, al- 
though advocating earnestly a return to the Chris- 
tian ethic. In recent years, however, we find ad- 
voeates of the same position occupying places of 
leadership and importance in organized Christian 
work. Not a few professors in our theological 
Seminaries occasionally express sentiments of the 
kind and now and then a similar word is heard 
from the pulpit. 

Perhaps the most notable illustration of this 
clesiastical History in Harvard University. Pro- 
fessor Kirsopp Lake of the Department of Ec- 
clesiastical History in Harvard University. Pro- 
fessor Lake is a scholar of wide repute in hig own 
special field. In the Ingersoll lecture for 1922 on 
Immortality and the Modern Mind, he states 
with the utmost frankness that not only does he 
not believe in personal survival but that, like Tol- 

117 


118 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


stoi, he regards the doctrine as detrimental to the 
true Christian ethic. Taking the saying of Jesus 
in Mark 8:35, ‘‘For whosoever will save his life 
shall lose it’? as the motto of the book and in a 
certain sense as his own personal creed, the author 
proceeds to interpret these words in such a way 
as to eliminate any idea of individual immortality. 
From the point of view of Doctor Lake, to lose 
one’s self means to surrender those characteristics 
of individuality and uniqueness which separate us 
from our fellows and from the Divine Being in 
order to find a larger life in the future progress 
of our work. The argument advanced is the same 
as that of Comte, and George Eliot and Frederic 
Harrison and the positivists in general that the 
immortality of influence is all that we can claim 
and is all that we ought to desire. Professor Lake 
stresses the altruistic feature of this teaching with 
persuasive eloquence. To desire immortality for 
one’s own personal existence, he thinks, is an es- 
sentially selfish proposal, and in the course of hu- 
man history has led to unfortunate results. Men 
were not better during the Medieval period because 
they believed much more thoroughly in the immor- 
tality of the individual soul than they do today. 
To quote his own language, ‘‘Even philanthropy 
was put on a wrong basis, and the charity of the 
Middle Ages was less often inspired by love of 
man than by the hope of heaven. In general there 


THE SURRENDER OF IMMORTALITY 119 


was produced a type of selfishness all the more 
repulsive because it was sanctified.’’ 

Our modern age has changed entirely men’s out- 
look toward the future life, at least Doctor Lake 
so interprets present day thinking and action. In 
his own judgment, this new attitude is destined 
to be regarded in future history as, ‘‘the great 
change of our time, commensurate with the rise 
of Christianity or with the Renaissance, far more 
important than wars or revolutions.’’ The author 
can see nothing but good in the new point of view. 
Men no longer strive to achieve heaven for their 
own individual souls, but they strive to make pos- 
sible a heaven on earth for their children and 
descendants. They are only concerned with the 
good they can do for future generations without 
any thought of reaping any immediate satisfaction 
for themselves. Dr. Lake admits that these men 
are usually materialists and while he does not sym- 
pathize with their philosophical background, he 
does have admiration for the ethical motive which 
dominates their lives. Speaking of this general 
class, he says, ‘‘Nevertheless there is no type of 
man at present living who so completely sacrifices 
himself for the good of others or cares so little 
about saving his own life. They are not seeking 
the crown, but many of them are bearing the cross, 
and though seeking the crown has been the prac- 
tice of the Christian, bearing the cross was the 
precept of the Christ.’’ 


120 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


The reason for the changed point of view con- 
cerning the life beyond the grave so widely prev- 
alent during our modern age is explained with 
the utmost frankness by Professor Lake. A better 
knowledge of our physical nature and the laws 
which control life has led to ‘‘the conviction that 
the continuance of sensation is impossible without 
physical structure, and that the survival of physi- 
cal structure is extremely improbable.’’ In other 
words, Professor Lake thinks science has shown 
us that life is bound up with the bodily organism 
and when the latter is dissolved by death, it is 
folly to expect the survival of personality. Like 
Professor Ostwald, Doctor Lake sees no proba- 
bility that the soul can survive the body, and ap- 
parently has no desire that it should do so. The 
disbelief in personal immortality is not based upon 
ethical but rather upon scientific considerations. 
Men do not reject the orthodox view of the future 
life because they have discovered it to be selfish 
and immoral, but because they have found it to be 
impossible. Inasmuch as it does not exist, they 
are pleased to learn that it is a detriment rather 
than a help to their ethical life. In making the 
most of a presumable loss, they discover that they 
are better off than they were before the loss oc- 
curred. 


Professor Lake says that the Christian view of 
immortality is based upon two distinct strands, the 


THE SURRENDER OF IMMORTALITY 121 


one he styles the doctrine of the Resurrection of the 
Flesh and the other the doctrine of the Immortality 
of the Soul. The former ‘‘was derived through 
Pharisaic Judaism from Persian thought and was 
held firmly and even passionately by orthodox 
Christianity.’’ The latter came from Greek pagan 
circles and especially the writings of Plato. Paul 
joined the two ideas together in his teaching con- 
cerning the spiritual body in the fifteenth chapter of 
First Corinthians. Professor Lake is not quite sure 
as to what Paul meant by a spiritual body, but he 
thinks that it involved in a certain rarefied sense 
the idea of the Resurrection of the Flesh. After 
Paul’s time, the Greek belief in the immortality 
of the soul gained precedence over the earlier view- 
point. It came to be the dominant principle in the 
eschatology of the Middle Ages with Dante’s 
ghastly pictures of the Inferno. In the main, the 
author follows the general outline already traced 
at length in this study, so we need pursue this 
phase of his discussion no further. It may be well 
to remark, however, that Dr. Lake has small re- 
spect for the development of Protestant eschatol- 
ogy with its elimination of purgatory and its re- 
tention of the Medieval heaven and hell. He says, 
‘‘Tt was a choice infinitely clumsy. It left out the 
only educative element in the Medieval system and 
retained an impossible combination of worn-out 
Persian and Greek mythology.”’ 


122 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


What is left of the old doctrine at the present 
time? Doctor Lake thinks there is very little. On 
the part of both clergy and laity, belief in the Res- 
urrection of the Flesh has become obsolete and 
the Immortality of the Soul wavers in the balance. 
Modern science in a very peculiar way agrees with 
the conclusions of primitive Christian reasoning 
with regard to the resurrection body. The early 
Christian could not conceive of a life which did not 
involve the physical organism and the present day 
scientist agrees entirely with this point of view. 
The only difference is that the Christian believed 
that the body would be raised from the dead in its 
material form while the scientist believes this to 
be both impossible and absurd. Christian and 
scientist alike agree that there can be no personal 
consciousness without the body. The idea that the 
soul can be immortal without the bodily organism 
is rejected quite as completely by the materialistic 
scientist as it was by the materialistic Christian 
of the first century. 

Professor Lake has little confidence in the evi- 
dence for personal immortality furnished by the 
Society for Psychical Research. He thinks that the 
phenomena dealt with in the investigations of the 
Society can be explained by telepathy. In the, to 
him, extremely improbable event that the tele- 
pathic explanation will not hold good, he feels sure 
that the continuance of life beyond death must in- 


THE SURRENDER OF IMMORTALITY 123 


volve a material basis. At this point, he agrees 
with the early Christian attitude. He regards 
it as much more probable, however, that the per- 
manent survival of individuality is only ‘‘a pleas- 
ant dream, impossible of fulfillment.’’ This con- 
clusion does not appear to him to be undesirable, 
as we have already seen. Accepting it frankly, he 
then proceeds to build up his own theory of the 
future life which he thinks will provide an ade- 
quate and indeed a superior substitute for the 
older Christian dogma. In brief, this substitute 
involves two features. The first is the idea of the 
Eastern mystics that human individuality is 
merged at death in the one universal Being of God 
and that the true goal of life is to seek such an 
identification even before our physical existence 
terminates. Along with this mystical absorption 
in the Infinite, the author adds a second feature 
borrowed directly from the Positivistic conception 
of the immortality of influence. We live in the 
good we have done, the unselfish service we have 
rendered others, the part which we have had in 
forwarding the general scheme of things. The 
combination of these two considerations into what 
may be called a sort of Pantheistic Positivism 
Professor Lake thinks quite adequate to replace 
the Pauline doctrine of the resurrection of the 
dead. 

The theory of Doctor Lake has been dealt with 
elsewhere, under other heads, and need not require 


124 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


lengthy treatment at this time. Im all essential 
particulars, it is simply a revival of the views of 
Comte with an effort to give them added interest 
and color by surrounding them with a tinge of 
Oriental Theosophy. The objections which apply 
to Positivism and Pantheism in general hold good 
in the present instance. One cannot see the signifi- 
eance of unselfish sacrifice for the good of the com- 
ing generations when according to all the canons 
of science which the Positivists accept, the material 
universe is destined to disappear at some future 
period. All the values preserved by innumerable 
acts of self-sacrifice through the ages will then be 
destroyed and leave not a wrack behind. The only 
way they can be preserved is by the supposition 
of some sort of spiritual transference and if we ac- 
cept this in the end we had as well accept it in the 
beginning. As for the mystical tinge which the 
theory involves, it is as old as the Upanishads and 
indeed older. It seems peculiar that it should be 
revived by a professor of Ecclesiastical History 
in one of the foremost Christian institutions of the 
world at the beginning of the twentieth century. 
The pagan world at the time of Christ was familiar 
with the doctrine and found it unsatisfying. They 
turned from it with gladness to accept Paul’s proc- 
lamation of a genuine personal life beyond the 
grave. ‘The idea of mystical absorption in the In- 
finite carried little comfort to troubled souls in 


THE SURRENDER OF IMMORTALITY 125 


those early days, and it carries little comfort now. 
Had Christianity proclaimed such a gospel instead 
of the triumphant message of the fifteenth chapter 
of First Corinthians, it is safe to say that it would 
not have gotten very far as a world religion. The 
Western mind, at least, extracts small satisfac- 
tion from the anticipation of Nirvana as the final 
coal of existence. 

We cannot help wondering when we read appeals 
like those of Professor Lake in favor of substitut- 
ing the gospel of Buddhism for the message of 
Christianity just why we should go back to the 
Ganges and the Indus for inspiration and help. 
The Oriental world is now turning toward us in 
order to find material for a new civilization. 
Buddhism, with its inadequate social development 
and Hinduism with its caste system and its pes- 
simistic outlook have been weighed in the balances 
and found wanting. The pragmatic test is against 
them. Nor can we believe that Dr. Lake himself 
would like to exchange our Western civilization, 
inadequately Christian as it is, for the best type 
of Hindu culture the ages have thus far developed. 


REFERENCES 


1. K. Lake, Immortality and the Modern Mind, pp. 6, 9, 10, 
ae Ay, ol, 20, 34, 37. 


CHAPTER XII 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 


T’ now becomes necessary for us to gather to- 

gether and to formulate in as definite fashion 
as possible the conclusions which our brief his- 
torical survey appears to warrant. It is quite 
obvious that these conclusions must be couched in 
language which although definite and specific must 
possess to no slight degree the spirit of humility. 

The first conclusion which appears justified is 
the fact that certain pagan and pre-Christian views 
which became attached to the early Christian con- 
cept of immortality must be definitely cast aside. 
Much of the Medieval eschatology with its em- 
phasis upon a species of Christian edition of Tar- 
tarus has been outgrown by the developing 
thought of the world. It is impossible for men and 
women who possess the rudiments of present day 
culture to think of the future life in precisely the 
same way that Augustine or Anselm or Calvin 
thought of it. In certain ultra-conservative circles, 
the older dogma may remain unimpaired, but these 
circles must continue to grow smaller and will 
eventually disappear. 

A second inference which the facts seem to war- 
rant is that of the dubious character of the old 

126 


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION iby 


Platonic doctrine concerning the inherent immor- 
tality of the soul. The idea that all souls are in 
their nature immortal and that all human beings 
alike possess such souls is no longer as convineing 
as it appeared some centuries ago. It is true that 
a few scientific authorities of note still hold to the 
‘fsoul substance’’ viewpoint, but they are in the 
minority at the present time. The writer does not 
believe that the Platonic doctrine has been defi- 
nitely disproved but he does believe that the 
weight of argument is against it. The case can- 
not be considered closed and evidence may be pro- 
duced at some time in the future which will throw 
an entirely different light on the situation, but as 
things stand at present the older doctrine appears 
to be removed from the realm of probability. 

So far as the present attitude of philosophy to- 
ward the question is concerned, the net result can- 
not be considered as hostile to immortality. Cer- 
tain representatives of the modern realistic school, 
it is true, have discarded any belief in a future 
life for the individual, but it cannot be said that this 
is the prevailing teaching of philosophy even in the 
group indicated. The modern idealistic school, 
with the exception of some writers like Professors 
Bradley and Bosanquet, in the main holds to the 
future life, and there are not a few pluralists and 
realists who take the same position. On the whole, 
the net result of speculative thinking down to the 


128 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


present time cannot be said to be unfavorable to 
the doctrine of personal immortality. This is the 
third deduction which appears to be justified by 
our historical analysis. 

In the fourth place, a review of the history of 
modern science leads to the conclusion that the em- 
phasis upon scientific processes during the last 
century has certainly modified and in some in- 
stances destroyed traditional views of the future 
life. In certain cases, scientific investigation ap- 
pears to have led directly to disbelief in personal 
survival after death. The tendency of scientific 
thinkers and writers to lean toward a materialistic 
metaphysic has had its influence in the same direc- 
tion. On the other hand, the developments in the 
field of psychical research and the later trend in 
the interpretation of biological evolution have 
proved important factors in helping to maintain 
and strengthen the faith in immortality on the part 
of many students. It seems fair to the facts to say 
that the testimony of science thus far has on the 
whole neither strengthened nor diminished the 
argument for at least some form of personal sur- 
vival. 


A fifth consideration is the fact that efforts to 
revive the Oriental philosophy of the future in our 
western civilization cannot be said to have achieved 
any marked success. The pantheistic doctrine of 
the Hindu cults and especially the teachings con- 


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 129 


cerning Karma and Nirvana have not been able to 
make any marked impression upon western 
thought. Occasionally a few exceptions may be 
found as in the case of our modern Theosophists 
and even certain university teachers, lke Pro- 
fessor Lake, but the vast majority of present day 
thinkers in the western world remain unattracted 
by the Oriental view of metempsychosis and 
similar theories. 

In connection with the much mooted subject of 
psychical research, or the argument from spirit- 
ualism in its various forms, it may be said, in the 
sixth place, that the evidence while somewhat im- 
pressive at certain points and in a few cases con- 
vincing to certain minds still appears to justify the 
Scottish verdict of ‘‘not proven.’’ Beyond any 
question, the psychical researchers have helped to 
offset the general materialistic trend of modern 
science, but this appears to be their most notable 
contribution, at least down to the present time. 
This was in substance the verdict of William - 
James and he perhaps knew as much about the 
facts and was capable of making as unprejudiced 
deductions from them as anyone who could be 
named. Psychical research therefore while not 
proving personal survival has contributed not a 
little toward strengthening the faith of those who 
accept the doctrine on other grounds. 

When we consider what we must regard as the 


130 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


real conception of immortality taught in the gos- 
pels and by the early church as a whole, that is, 
the belief that faith in Jesus Christ means incor- 
poration in the divine life and continued existence 
on this account, it seems obvious to the writer that 
there is nothing in present day thought which tends 
to discredit the doctrine. On the contrary, there 
is much that helps to support and encourage it. 
More than ever, the futility and purposelessness of 
existence without the life beyond the grave be- 
comes apparent to the thoughtful Christian of to- 
day. Theories like those of Professor Lake do not 
satisfy any more than they have satisfied in the 
past. Only the consciousness of living fellowship 
with the Father of our spirits brings satisfaction 
and peace. As Professor Pringle-Pattison puts it, 

Every other being is, as it were, a channel of the Universal 
Will; but man, as self-conscious, can distinguish himself even from 
his Maker, and set his own will against the divine. Is it, then, 
unreasonable to conclude that an individuality so real, and the goal 
apparently of an age-long process must be capable of surviving the 
dissolution of the material frame through which it was brought into 
being? The body, ceasing to be a living body, may relapse into its 
elements when it has ‘‘fulfilled’’ itself, while the true individual, 


in which that fulfillment consisted, pursues his destiny under new 
conditions. 


President George KE. Horr of the Newton Theo- 
logical Institution in the Ingersoll Lecture for 1923 
stresses this idea of fellowship with the Divine 
Being with persuasiveness and power. He holds 
that only through the family concept can the 


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION dus} 


fatherhood of God be definitely realized. He re- 
gards the immortality of influence as altogether in- 
adequate for the conservation of true moral values. 
He says, ‘‘The heirs of a fortune may enter into 
an inheritance; but the reaction upon the character 
of the one who by his industry, enterprise, and 
facing of difficulties gained the wealth, cannot be 
transmitted to others. The development and en- 
richment of personality is the consummate result 
of noble living, and if the living man ceases to 
exist, that is lost forever. The choicest values per- 
sist only in the lives of those who won them; they 
cannot be transmitted.’’ Dr. Horr defines eternal © 
life in line with the interpretation followed in the 
first chapter of the present study and asserts that 
the Easter message of the early church involved 
this idea as its kernel. The doctrine of the Resur- 
rection as St. Paul taught it embodied the same 
conception. Moreover, the mystical evidence of 
experience with the risen Lord in Paul’s own life 
and in the lives of countless Christians since his 
time has confirmed the theoretical evidence of the 
reality of the future life. Such proof although 
incommunicable to others is conclusive and over- 
whelming to the one who possesses it. 

Perhaps the chief drawback in the way of the 
acceptance of a belief in the life beyond on the part 
of most doubters of the present day is the modern 
tendency toward materialism in every form. This 


132 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


tendency, while rejecting the older and cruder 
materialistic views of eschatology, has found 
nothing to take their place. The early Christians 
thought of heaven and hell under forms of imagery 
which we consider inadequate and crude. We have 
not accustomed ourselves to clothing the great 
truth embodied in the doctrine of immortality with 
forms of imagery appropriate to our present de- 
velopment. The nearest approach in this direction 
- has been made by Fechner whose little book on 
the future life remains one of the most appealing 
and beautiful contributions to the subject. We 
need a new vision of heaven which will interpret 
the reality of the life to come in such forms as will 
be meaningful to our present age. There is too 
much disposition at the present time to feel that 
we know nothing about the future life and can 
know nothing about it, therefore we shall cease to 
think about it. In the end, of course, there is a 
tendency for us to give up our faith in it. Reality 
demands a certain concreteness of imagery and 
this is as true of the future life as it is of any other 
consideration in the universe. 

After all, one’s belief in immortality, like one’s 
belief in God or in any concept that possesses 
value, demands a certain degree of moral courage 
and heroism. Professor L. P. Jacks, in his fas- 
einating little book entitled Religious Perplex- 
ities has called attention to this fact in simple 


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 133 


but unforgettable language. The universe is not 
adapted to the coward nor to the cowardly type of 
mind. We are surrounded on all sides by per- 
plexities, but if we are courageous and are willing 
to exercise faith, we need not fall into the abyss 
of despair. From the beginning, religion has al- 
ways been an adventure of the soul. It was so 
with Abraham and with every member of the noble 
galaxy who are immortalized in the eleventh chap- 
ter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Without faith 
it is impossible to please God and faith always 
demands high-spirited courage and a certain will- 
ingness to stake one’s all on the reality of good- 
ness and truth. As Professor Jacks says so 
/admirably, Christianity does not pretend to free us * 

| from our perplexities, but it does enable us to face 
“them boldly and to triumph over them. Like the 
ereat Apostle to the Gentiles, we are always per- 
plexed, ‘‘but not unto despair.”’ 


There is nothing in the history of either philoso- 
phy or science which makes faith in the future life 
as Christ taught it any more difficult today than it 
has been in the past. Always there has been room 
for doubt and disbelief and it does not appear that 
this situation will vanish with earthly conditions 
as they now are. On the other hand, there are 
many things in the progress of knowledge which 
lend encouragement to faith, while there is nothing 
which forbids its exercise. 


134 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


On the memorial tablet to Frederic W. H. Myers 
in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome, there is writ- 
ten this quotation from the fourth verse of the 
twenty-first Psalm: ‘‘He asked life of thee, and 
thou gavest it him, even length of days forever 
and ever.’’? Just beneath the tablet, which is fas- 
tened to the old Roman wall, there is the marble 
slab which covers the ashes of Shelley. On the 
English poet’s tomb is engraved the well-known 
quotation from The Tempest: 

There is nothing that doth fade 
But doth suffer a sea-change 
Into something rich and strange. 

The two epitaphs bear silent witness to the true 
gospel of immortality. Our Father has given us 
‘‘leneth of days forever and forever’’ because we 
are His children, but this new life will mean a 
transition ‘‘into something rich and strange’’ after 
the experience we call death. ‘‘It doth not yet ap- 
pear what we shall be,’’ but we need not fear, for 
we know that we shall live in His home where there 
are many mansions and that through His gracious 
love ‘‘we shall be like Him.’’ 


REFERENCES 

1. G. E. Horr, The Christian’ Faith and Eternal Life, pp. 28, 
29, 39, 51. 

2. R. M. Jones, Religious Foundations, Chapter X. 

3. G. T. Fechner, Life After Death. 

4. L. P. Jacks, Religious Perplexities, Chapter IIT. 

5. S. D. F. Salmond, The Christian Doctrine of Immortality, 
Book 6. 

6. Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of Immortality, Lecture 10. 


HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 
PART II. CONSTRUCTIVE SUGGESTIONS 


“Earth changes, but thy soul and God Stand sure” 


ESUS said unto her, I am the resurrec- 

tion, and the life: he that believeth on 
me, though he die, yet shall he live; and 
whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall 
never die. 


—Jesus Christ 


CHAPTER XII 
FAITH IN THE SOUL 


Oe study up to the present point has been of a 

purely historical character. We have out- 
lined in the briefest possible fashion what men 
have thought about the future life during the last 
two thousand years. We have tried to reach cer- 
tain critical conclusions as the result of this his- 
torical survey. Doubtless these conclusions will 
seem to many readers of a rather negative charac- 
ter. They certainly do not justify us in asserting 
that the future life can be regarded as a datum of 
science. On the other hand, they assuredly do not 
make it scientifically necessary for one to disbe- 
lieve in immortality. The field is left open for the 
exercise of the will to believe, or in other words, 
the question remains in the realm of faith where it 
has always been in the past. 


The writer frankly confesses that he would like 
to see the subject removed from the realm of faith 
to the realm of science. He confesses thorough 
sympathy with every effort which has been and is 
being made to achieve this result. He believes that 
if it could be scientifically demonstrated that hu- 
man beings are immortal, such a discovery would 

137 


138 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


be the most important that has thus far been made 
in the history of the human race. Christianity 
owed its success in the first place to the preaching 
of the Resurrection. Now the Resurrection is 
nothing more than a scientific demonstration of the 
reality of the future life. From a theological point 
of view, it is easy to understand why the unique 
character of Jesus made his Resurrection a unique 
event in world history, but this fact removes the 
Resurrection from the field of scientific study as 
we know it. While the Resurrection of Jesus be- 
comes therefore a tremendous aid to faith in the 
reality of a future life, it does not help to transfer 
the problem from the realm of faith to the realm 
of science. If this transfer could be made, it would 
simply confirm the teaching of Jesus with regard 
to the future, and confirm it in such a way that 
there would be no possibility of doubting it. 

If immortality could be scientifically demon- 
strated, the fact would unquestionably produce 
vast changes in all forms of human activity. Noth- 
ing would tend to overthrow materialism in all of 
its forms like such a demonstration. We are not 
now concerned primarily with the question of eth- 
ics. Opinions differ widely as to the value of a 
belief in immortality in the realm of pure ethics. 
We have already referred to the fact that Prof. 
Pringle-Pattison, in common with many other 
thinkers, regards such a belief as of no particular 
ethical significance. People ought to be good 


FAITH IN THE SOUL 139 


whether they are to live hereafter or not, and if 
they are not good without the spur of future re- 
wards or punishments, their goodness possesses 
no real ethical value. On the other hand, many dis- 
tinguished names including among others those of 
Luther, Augustine, Wesley, Browning, Tennyson, 
and Longfellow regard immortality as a distinct 
ethical factor. Whatever position we take with 
regard to its influence upon morals, there can be 
no question about the fact that belief in a future 
life has a profound bearing upon human behavior. 
If the average man accepted immortality as a 
scientific fact, it would introduce an item into the 
calculations of his daily life which would pro- 
foundly affect his actions. Professor Pringle- 
Pattison himself would probably act somewhat dif- 
ferently in the light of an assured immortality and 
so would all the rest of us. Browning in his little 
poem entitled ‘‘A Grammarian’s Funeral’’ has 
shown how this assurance works out in the field of 
pure scholarship. The hero of the poem is so con- 
vineed that he will have eternity in which to con- 
tinue his studies that he attacks small and insig- 
nificant questions in this life, leaving the larger 
issues for the period hereafter when he will have 
more time to study them. If he had felt any doubt 
concerning his personal immortality, he would have 
acted very differently in choosing his studies. At 
bottom, every human being is like the grammarian. 
There is no important step in life which the assur- 


140 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


ance of immortality does not affect. Whether it be 
in the field of education or business or of polities 
or of social life, the knowledge that death does not 
end all would necessarily have the most profound 
influence upon behavior. So long as immortality 
has not received scientific demonstration, it is of 
the utmost significance that the strongest possible 
faith in it should be developed. This faith may be- 
come so strong as almost to pass over into the field 
of assured demonstration. It is this kind of faith 
to which Paul referred when he said, ‘‘I know 
whom I have believed,’’ and it is this kind of faith 
which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
calls the substance of things hoped for, the evi- 
dence, or assurance, of things not seen. When we 
pass over from the realm of science into the realm 
of faith, it is possible to possess all shades of con- 
viction ranging from the practical certainty of 
Paul to the half indefinite apprehension of the 
modern materialist which is only one shade re- 
moved from positive disbelief. The function of 
religion is to strengthen faith, and there is no item 
of faith which is more important than the belief in 
a future life. Some devout souls have felt that to 
remove this question from the realm of faith to 
that of fact would mean a distinct loss. As al- 
ready noted, we do not at all share this belief. 
There will always be enough of material for the 
exercise of faith even if this all important issue 
should be included among the data of science. 


FAITH IN THE SOUL 141 


The most important consideration in developing 
real faith in personal immortality is the recogni- 
tion of the value and reality of human personality. 
It is useless to talk about the immortality of the 
soul if there is no soul to be immortal. It is a 
waste of time to argue in favor of the persistence 
of the self if there is no self to persist. Hence, the 
starting point of any real faith in the significance 
of the future lies in building up a faith in the sig- 
nificance of the present. There is a type of mecha- 
nistic psychology which explains all human be- 
havior in terms of physical reaction. Those who 
accept this view do not of course believe in immor- 
tality. Nevertheless, even the most cocksure rep- 
resentatives of this school of thought will hardly 
assert that their position represents anything more 
than an hypothesis. The facts which this hypoth- 
esis is intended to explain may be explained in 
other ways and are thus explained by many psy- 
chologists. Professor McDougall, for example, 
although a thoroughgoing scientist, does not accept 
the mechanistic interpretation. He is one of those 
thinkers who, while not particularly desirous of 
immortality, yet believes that the human self is of 
such a character that immortality is inherently 
probable. The fact is that while human behavior 
has a distinctly mechanistic side, when it is consid- 
ered in its larger aspects, it passes beyond the 
mechanistic field. We doubt whether the most 
frantic behaviorist does not occasionally have 


142 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


moments of sober reflection when he takes himself 
more seriously than the strict logic of his theory 
will permit. We shall have something more to say 
about this feature of the situation a little later. 


Nothing has helped to stimulate faith in the real 
significance and value of the human soul during 
recent years more than the development of the 
comparatively new science known as the psychol- 
ogy of religion. Starting out from a purely posi- 
tivistic and mechanistic point of view, the psychol- 
ogy of religion has developed to a point where it 
has become a distinct adjunct to faith. The recent 
works of Pratt, Thouless, Selbie, and Strickland 
in this field all give encouragement to a belief in 
the value of the human soul and in the probability 
of its persistence after it has passed through the 
experience we call death. It may be worth our 
while to turn for a few moments to the testimony 
of some of these later psychologists. Says Profes- 
sor Pratt in Chapter XI of The Religious Con- 
SCLOUSNESS: 

If we analyze the emotional form of conviction concerning im- 
mortality we shall, I think, find that in most cases it is based upon 
a direct apprehension of the essential worth of the self; going back, 


I suppose, to the instinct of self-assertion—if indeed it does not 
go back farther than any instinct. 


In another place in the same chapter he refers 
to the Platonic emphasis upon the dignity of the 
human soul as after all the surest basis of its con- 
tinued existence. Professor Pratt does not think 


FAITH IN THE SOUL 148 


that modern psychology has made it impossible for 
one to believe in the absolute worth of the human 
spirit. He says: 

Probably the argument for immortality that is both most gen- 
erally persuasive and logically the soundest consists in pointing out 
the essential difference between consciousness and its processes on 
the one hand, and the material world and its laws on the other. 


This is, of course, the essence of the Platonic arguments, and noth- 
ing better is likely ever to be suggested. 


Principal Selbie in his recently published text on 
The Psychology of Religion (Oxford, 1924), takes 
substantially the same position as Professor Pratt. 
He says among other things: 


Leaving the religious question for the moment, we find that the 
real ground for the persistence of the belief in immortality among 
reflective men is to be found in the working of consciousness. The 
primitive belief in spirits has its counterpart in civilized and more 
sophisticated minds in a recoil from the merely mechanical view of 
life, and a consciousness of the self as spiritual in the sense of 
being independent and even master of the fleshly and material life. 


Professor Strickland (Psychology of Religious 
Experience, New York, 1924) gives two reasons 
for believing that the soul survives after death. 
These two reasons represent the culmination of 
the concluding chapter of his book in which he 
deals with the subject of immortality in its rela- 
tion to psychology and religion: 

First. The control of mind over organic process, which is in- 
creasingly evident at certain levels of human experience, points to 


the growing independence of mind and to the possibility of the self 
surviving the organism. 


144 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


Second. The capacity of the self to organize experience increas- 
ingly in terms of the higher social values (as contrasted with mere 
organic needs) points to the possibility of the self surviving the 
organism. 


Until we can secure a greater weight of objec- 
tive evidence for human survival, our argument 
must always turn largely upon an appeal to the 
consciousness of the individual. Plato’s feeling of 
the native worth of the soul has about it a touch 
of reality which defies skepticism. The argument 
for immortality in the Phaedo while technically 
outworn possesses a perennial freshness because 
of its appeal to personal consciousness. Socrates 
calmly looking upon the hemlock as a trivial inci- 
dent in a career which is to be only triflingly inter- 
rupted, represents, of course, the real argument of 
the book. Nearly twenty-five centuries later, Mr. 
Clement C. J. Webb in his second series of Gifford 
Lectures writes of the soul in terms that are as 
Socratic as our modern idiom will permit: 


I speak in the text of ‘‘mind or soul’’ for the following reason. 
It is the ‘‘mind’’ as the subject of experience which is thus so re- 
markably distinguished from the body as including instead of ex- 
cluding within its own unity that with which it is connected in a 
system. If we attribute to the ‘‘soul’’ vital activities below the 
level of consciousness, this may not seem to be true in the same 
way of the ‘‘soul.’’ But, in the first place, the characteristic dif- 
ference of organic growth from inorganic aggregation seems to lie 
in a process of assimilation which anticipates, as it were, the proc- 
ess of drawing within the unity of its own experience which is the 
characteristic of ‘‘mind.’’ And in the second place, as was pointed 


FAITH IN THE SOUL 145 


out in my previous course of Lectures, we may be said to have in 
Life generally something which, as distinct from mere mechanism, 
we interpret on the analogy of Mind. 


Like Plato and Socrates, Kant and Hoffding find 
immortality fundamentally a problem in the con- 
servation of values. If personality is valuable and 
there 1s any meaning in the universe, personality 
must be preserved. Moreover, personal values 
eannot be transferred because the very essence of 
personality consists in its uniqueness. A man may 
leave his thought and his works to posterity, but 
if any worth attaches to the man himself, this 
worth cannot be passed on to others. There is 
something about the human consciousness which 
seems to give the lie to mechanism. We may argue 
ourselves into the belief that we are nothing but 
physical reactions, but all the while there is a 
subtle contradiction underlying our argument. The 
self which knows and which knows that it knows 
is a larger thing than the mechanism which it ana- 
lyzes. Even those who have not accepted orthodox 
religious views concerning the nature of the soul 
have at times acknowledged their inability to get 
away from the idea. One of the most notable illus- 
trations of this fact is to be found in the often 
quoted passage from Huxley’s Letters: 

It is a curious thing that I find my dislike to the thought of 
extinction increasing as I get older and nearer the goal. It flashes 


across me at all sorts of times and with a sort of horror that in 
1900 I shall probably know no more of what is going on than I 


146 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


did in 1800. I had sooner be in hell a good deal—at any rate in 
one of the upper circles where the climate and company are not too 
trying. 


In much the same fashion Dr. Felix Adler, the 
distinguished advocate of Ethical Culture, writes: 


Only this I feel warranted in holding fast to, that the root of 
my selfhood, the best that is in me, my true and only being, can- 
not perish. In regard to that the notion of death seems to me to 
be irrelevant. 


It would be easy to multiply quotations of this 
character. There are few thoughtful people who 
do not at some time or other possess what may be 
styled the consciousness of immortality. Of course 
this consciousness may be regarded as an illusion 
and may be dismissed summarily on this account. 
On the other hand, it may be cherished and may 
become a, definite ground of assurance to those who 
possess it. Some years ago before a student meet- 
ing at Princeton University, Dr. Robert E. Speer 
in asserting his own consciousness of the reality 
of the human spirit used this expression, ‘‘ Gentle- 
men, I do not have a soul; I am a soul.’’ Among 
modern philosophers, Bergson has seized upon this 
primary consciousness of the reality of the self 
and has made it the basis of his system. William 
James also has called attention to the superior 
value of this feeling of reality when contrasted 
with the more subtle second-hand speculations of 
metaphysics. There is therefore good warrant in 


FAITH IN THE SOUL 147 


the realms of both science and philosophy for be- 
lieving in the reality and the worth of human per- 
sonality. Such belief will not always lead to a con- 
viction that the self is immortal, but it is almost a 
necessary presupposition of faith in a future life. 
Moreover, it naturally leads to such a philosophy 
of the world as makes immortality reasonable and 
probable. 

‘*What shall a man give in exchange for his 
soul?’’ Nothing at all, if our modern mechanists 
are right, for according to them, the soul is a 
chimera and one would be foolish to exchange any- 
thing of value for it. Some of us, however, will 
continue to believe that Jesus knew more about the 
matter than the mechanists. In our daily experi- 
ence, things are constantly happening which upset 
the mechanistic hypothesis. A few years ago such 
an event occurred in connection with that wild and 
weird return journey of Captain Scott and his 
companions from the South Pole. One of the 
party, Captain Oates, had his feet frozen, and had 
to be carried along through the blinding snow- 
storm by his comrades. He begged them to leave 
him behind so that they might have a chance to 
save their own lives, but his proposal was met with 
scorn. Finally, when they halted for the night, at 
one of the last stations which the party was able 
to make, Oates staggered out of the hut into the 
storm with the remark, ‘‘I am just going outside, 
and may be gone some time.’’? His comrades never 


148 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


saw him again, and when the party which had been 
sent out to rescue Captain Scott found the dead 
members of the band, Scott with his journal in his 
hand, they were unable to locate the body of Oates. 
In memory of his heroic action, they set up a cross 
near the spot where he wandered out into the storm 
and wrote this inscription upon it: ‘‘Hereabouts 
died a very gallant gentleman.’’ Scott, in the last 
entry of his diary, had written: ‘‘The Great God 
has called me. Take comfort in that. I die at 
peace with the world and myself and not afraid.’’ 
He and his companions had taken as their motto 
the words, ‘*To seek—to strive—to find and not to 
yield.’’ 

Frank Parker Stockbridge has written a poem 
upon the epitaph of Oates which was published a 
few years ago in Everybody’s Magazme. It is en- 
titled ‘‘A Very Gallant Gentleman’’ and sums up 
the argument of this chapter in such a clear and 
forceful way that we quote it entire: 


So that’s the answer, eh? We’re only lumps 

Of ordinary chemicals—some salts, 

Acids, and gases, accidently grouped 

In cell-formation? There creation halts, 

You say, and what comes next is just what comes 
When you put this and that and t’other bit 

Of inorganic matter in your tube 

And watch the mixture swirl and seethe and spit 
Till all its atoms find affinities. 


FAITH IN THE SOUL 149 


That’s all, you say? Then life and love and hate, 
Courage and hope and anguish and despair, 

The will to strive, the pride of duty done, 

The fear of shame that drives the coward to dare 
The death he dreads—all these, you say, are one 
With your reactions done in Jena glass? 


O shrewd philosophers! Your simple plan 
To shift the whole responsibility 
For all we are and all we hope to be— 
How easy! ‘‘Here’s a compound we call man, 
And here’s one called a rock, and here’s a cliff. 
The rock rolls off the cliff and kills the man; 
But can you blame the rock? Nor can you if 
The man obeys the natural laws that pull 
All of us, always, down and ever down. 
For if we sink ‘reactions’—that absolves, 
And if we rise—‘reactions’—nothing more.’’ 


* * * * * * * 


Pardon me, gentlemen, but—‘‘it’s a lie.’’ 
“‘Reactions,’’ eh? Well, what’s your formula 
For one particular kind—I won’t insist 

On proof of every theorem in the list; 

But only one—what chemicals combine, 

What CO, and H,SO,, 

To cause such things as happened yesterday, 
To send a very gallant gentleman 

Into antarctic night, to perish there 

Alone, not driv’n nor shamed nor cheered to die, 
But fighting, as mankind has always fought, 
His baser self, and conquering, as mankind 
Down the long years has always conquered self. 


What are your tests to prove a man’s a man? 
Which of yowr compounds ever lightly threw 
Its life away, as men have always done, 
Spurr’d not by lust nor greed nor hope of fame 


150 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


But casting all aside on the bare chance 

That it might somehow serve the Greater Good? 
There’s a reaction—what’s its formula? 
Produce that in your test tubes if you can! ’’ 


REFERENCES 


. Pringle-Pattison, The Idea of Immortality, Chapter X. 

R. Browning, A Grammarian’s Funeral. 

W. McDougall, Body and Mind, earlier chapters. 

J. B. Pratt, The Religious Consciousness, Chapters I, II, and 


{ef 
(O00 Fe go Pop 


Strickland, The Psychology of Religious Experience, Chapter 


is 


. Selbie, The Psychology of Religion, Chapter XIV. 
. Thouless, An Introduction to the Psychology of Religion. 
. Plato, Dialogues, The Phaedo. 
C. C. J. Webb, Divine Personality and Human Life, Chapter 
X. 
10. Huxley, Life and Letters, Vol. ii. 
11. H. Bergson, Creative Evolution, Chapter I. 
12. W. James, A Pluralistic Universe, Chapter V. 


CHAPTER XIV 
FAITH IN GOD 


N his recent volume of criticism entitled Mam- 
monart, Mr. Upton Sinclair refers to God as 
‘‘the greatest of all auto-suggestions.’’ This def- 
inition is not at all new, although it has not always 
been stated in exactly the same way. Robert 
Ingersoll expressed it facetiously when he referred 
to God as having been created in the image of man 
instead of man in the image of God. Quite a num- 
ber of modern psychologists refer to the Deity as 
purely a subjective idea or ideal without any ob- 
jective existence. Such writers assert that the idea 
has value and therefore should be retained. They 
speak of themselves as Theists and frequently as 
Christians. They believe in God, but the God in 
whom they believe turns out to be nothing more 
than an idea which they have themselves created. 
Those who accept this subjective view of the 
Deity of course have little use for the doctrine of 
immortality. Long ago Kant saw that without the 
reality of God, both freedom and immortality be- 
come meaningless terms. If there is a moral uni- 
verse there must be a God, and if there is a God, 
there must be a hereafter for the human spirit. So 
the Kénigsberg philosopher reasoned, and _ his 
argument still holds. People who do not believe in 
151 


£52 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


immortality do not usually believe in a personal 
-God, while those who believe in such a Deity usu- 
ally anticipate a life to come. There are of course 
exceptions to the rule, but they are neither numer- 
ous nor significant. The present day decline in 
faith concerning the future life has been accom- 
panied by a decline in faith in a personal God. 
Professor Leuba’s questionnaire referred to in a 
previous chapter is an illustration of this fact. 
Belief in God and in immortality were lnked to- 
gether in most of the responses which he received. 


The theory which regards God as merely a sub- 
jective creation always insists upon the necessity 
of thinking and acting as though he were real. 
Prayer from this point of view is of course nothing 
but auto-suggestion and yet prayer is a good thing. 
The difficulty about the theory is that it defeats its 
own end. God is looked upon as a valuable and 
serviceable idea, but when an individual comes to 
regard God as nothing more than an idea, the idea 
itself ceases to possess value. Assuming that 
prayer is nothing but auto-suggestion, it soon loses 
all value as prayer when this view of its nature 
comes to be held by the one who prays. One may 
logically suggest to himself desirable ends after 
the fashion of M. Coué, but even M. Coué never 
prays to himself. What prayer logically means to 
a disciple of the subjective theory is vividly 
brought out in the following petition which may be 
called the model prayer of the Positivist: 


FAITH IN GOD 10D 


O thou great Construct of our social aspirations! Thou who hast 
arisen out of millennial attitudes and who in thyself, which art a 
social personal self, dost enshrine all social personal virtues, thou 
who wilt function in us who are social personal centres of sen- 
tience in accordance with adjustments which we make in our social 
strivings, thou who dost exist only in our own social consciousnesses, 
we beseech thee for nothing, knowing that thou canst give us noth- 
ing, thank thee for what we have ourselves achieved, and ask only 
for the peace of relaxation which comes from auto-suggestion aris- 
ing from our idea of Thee which we enlarge daily in our evolution. 


Perhaps few subjectivists ever use such a prayer 
as this in actual experience, and yet it is just the 
kind of prayer which the logic of their theory de- 
mands. The fact that it is not used simply proves 
that the idea of prayer like the idea of the Deity 
no longer possesses value when it is regarded as 
purely subjective. Prayer may be nothing more 
than auto-suggestion, but we must believe it to be 
something more if we are to continue to pray. The 
attempt to hold on to it while at the same time ac- 
cepting a theory of its nature which deprives it of 
all meaning or value is simply an impossible com- 
bination. 


If modern subjectivism has undermined a vital 
belief in God, it is also true that the older views 
of orthodoxy are equally valueless for thoughtful 
minds of the present age. It is impossible for us 
to think of God just as Augustine or Calvin thought 
of Him, or as He is defined in the older standards. 
The doctrine of predestination which is indissol- 
ubly associated with the older views of the Deity is 


154. HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


out of harmony with modern ethical conceptions 
and if insisted upon can only add to the prevailing 
skepticism. In our historical survey we have dealt 
with these older conceptions at sufficient length and 
need not refer to them further. What we wish to 
emphasize is the fact that while we must believe 
in a God who is real, He need not be the God of the 
Augustinian theology. Modern subjectivism has 
practically eliminated God entirely, but we shall 
not meet its arguments by going back to outworn 
dogmas. We must meet them by holding up the 
God of the New Testament, and not the God of 
later creedal formulations. As between a deity 
who possesses the unethical attributes which we 
find depicted in the pages of St. Augustine and the 
shadowy ideal worshiped by modern Positivism, 
many will prefer the latter. What is needed is a 
concept of God which does not deprive Him of ob- 
jectivity but which is also capable of intelligent 
acceptance by the modern mind. 

Such a concept we are constrained to believe is 
to be found in the early Christian view of the reve- 
lations of God in Jesus Christ. Professor MeGif- 
fert in his recently published volume of lectures, 
entitled The God of the Early Christians, has 
shown with admirable clearness that it was this 
conception of the Deity which dominated the think- 
ing of the early Gentile Christian community. It 
was not until later that the more highly speculative 
theories embodied in the Nicene and Athanasian 


FAITH IN GOD 155 


Creeds came to be accepted. The early Christians 
looked upon Jesus as the highest embodiment of 
God which men can understand or know. Jesus 
was real to them, and therefore God was real. 
Jesus had been raised from the dead and had 
promised eternal life to his followers; therefore, 
they believed unhesitatingly in personal immortal- 
ity. This simple faith in a few short years con- 
quered the world. There is nothing to indicate 
that it has lost its power today. If people do not 
believe in God at the present time, it is largely 
because they no longer find it possible to infuse 
reality into an outworn metaphysical concept. It 
is still possible, however, to believe in a God who is 
like Jesus Christ. Not that Jesus in His earthly 
existence exhausted all of the fulness of the divine 
nature, for He nowhere claims this, but simply that 
He reveals to us as much of God as we are able to * 
understand or to know. Having seen Him, we 
have seen the Father. This is the tremendous 
value of the doctrine of the deity of Christ. Not 
only does this doctrine identify God with the high- 
est ethical ideal which the world has ever seen or 
known, but it also takes God out of the realm of 
abstractions and subjective ideas and makes Him 
supremely personal and real. 


It is just such a concept of God which our mod- 
ern age demands. The reality of the future life 


156 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


was never more vivid or more powerful than it was 
in the early days of Christianity. Faith in it was 
then so strong that it almost passed over into 
knowledge. The basis of this faith was the idea of 
God which was held by the early Christians. We 
eannot hope to recover the one thing without re- 
covering the other. When we can whole-heartedly 
believe that God is real and not a mere idea or 
subjective impression, and furthermore that in His 
reality He is more like Jesus Christ than He is 
like anyone else we know or can know, we shall 
take a different attitude toward the future life. 


It may be objected that such a conception of the 
Deity as we have just outlined is inadequate and 
incomplete. It says nothing about problems of 
creation, omniscience, omnipresence, and a host of 
other features dear to the theologians of all ages. 
The advantage of the doctrine as we see it consists 
precisely in the fact that it does not dogmatize 
about such things. The God of the creeds is based 
upon a monistic metaphysics which modern science 
has sorely riddled. Under the assaults of men like 
James, Ward, Schiller, Dewey, and other pluralists 
and pragmatists, the old absolutism in philosophy 
seems tottering to ruin. The early Christian con- 
ception of God is not affected by the controversy 
between monism and pluralism. As William 
James has shown, the God of the gospels fits into 


FAITH IN GOD 157 


a pluralistic scheme of the universe without the 
slightest difficulty. The conception of God in 
Christ is just as vital today as it ever was. This 
is not true of any other view of the nature of God. 
Humanity has always loved Jesus Christ and has 
always believed in Him. To accept Him as God or 
perbaps more correctly as the highest revelation of 
God which we can know is the supreme need of our 
own age as it has been of the ages past. With this 
acceptance will come an ever deepening and in- 
creasing faith in the reality of the future life. Like 
the early Christians, we shall come to know that 
for us as for them, death is swallowed up in vic- 
tory. 


Nothing in what has been written is intended to 
destroy the faith of those who still cling to the old 
theological interpretations of the Deity and find 
them vital and satisfying. A man may have as 
much theology as he pleases provided his theology 
does not entirely obscure his God. The supreme 
Teacher expressed what is needed when he said, 
‘‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart and with all thy soul and with all thy 
strength and with all thy mind.’’ Any conception 
of the Deity which makes such a personal devotion 
possible will lead to a more robust faith in immor- 
tality. 


158 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


REFERENCES 


. U. Sinclair, Mammonart, Chapter LXXXIV. 

J. B. Pratt, Religious Consciousness, Chapter I. 

J. R. Leuba, Belief in God and Immortality. 

C. Gore, Belief in God, Chapter I. 

. A. C. MeGiffert, The God of the Early Christians, Chapters 
EL etlicande ly. 

. W. James, A Pluralistic Universe, Chapter VIII. 

. J. Ward, The Realm of Ends, Chapter XX. 

. F. C. 8. Schiller, Riddles of the Sphinx, Chapter X. 

. H. G. Wells, God the Invisible King, Introduction. 


Se 


oono 


CHAPTER XV 
THE TESTIMONY OF THE SEERS 


HE poet is essentially a seer. The poets them- 

selves have always recognized this fact, and 
however devoted to the technique of their craft they 
may have been, they have always left a large place 
for inspiration in explaining their work. Words- 
worth had a certain theory of art which he thought 
important, but practically everybody who reads his 
poems agrees that whatever value they possess was 
produced in spite of the author’s theory, and not 
on account of it. In like manner, Edgar Allan Poe 
wrote an essay explaining the purely mechanical 
character of his poetry, but no other person has 
ever been able to write poetry hke The Raven 
or The Bells by following Poe’s directions. We 
may not be able to explain inspiration or genius, 
but no one doubts that these words represent facts 
and facts of tremendous importance to the human 
race. The truth which comes by way of inspiration 
is in fact first-hand material, while the truth ar- 
rived at by logical processes is always second- 
hand. It is the difference between genius and tal- 
ent, between the artist and the pedant, between 
insight and the mechanical accumulations of facts. 
The common people of Judea understood the con- 

159 


160 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


trast when they commented upon the messages of 
Jesus by saying that He taught them as one having 
authority, and not as the Scribes. To the scribal 
group belong many modern representatives—crit- 
ies, scientists, pedagogues, smart writers, doctors 
of philosophy, of divinity, and of laws, dreary and 
dry-as-dust authorities of every description. These 
purveyors of second-hand knowledge bulk large in 
questionnaires like those of Professor Leuba, him- 
self an admirable representative of the group, and 
in the catalogue of contributors to our technical 
magazines. Such folk are useful after their fash- 
ion, but the fires of faith always burn low in them. 
They sit in judgment on their betters and find a 
sort of sardonic satisfaction in pouring water upon 
the divine fire which they themselves cannot kindle. 

The poets have always had a good deal to say 
about immortality. It is true that not all of them 
have believed in it, but when one calls the roll of 
the ages, it is astonishing how small is the number 
of skeptics. The ancient Hebrews possessed a re- 
ligion which was notoriously silent concerning the 
future life, and yet the Hebrew poets frequently 
rise above the level of thought of their people, and 
at least touch the borders of eternal life. If there 
is any doctrine of immortality at all in the Old 
Testament, it is to be found in the writings of the 
poet, and not in those of the historians or law- 
givers. There are certain Psalms which assuredly 
seem to hint at immortality, and our ordinary 


THE TESTIMONY OF SEERS 161 


burial service contains quotations from Job which 
rightly or wrongly have been usually held to refer 
to the resurrection from the dead. Such quotations 
as ‘‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’’ and ‘‘ Thou 
wilt not permit my soul to remain in Sheol’’ may 
not directly refer to personal immortality, but 
most people will agree that they at least look in 
that direction. 

The future life is discussed by nearly all the 
Greek poets, and is regarded as almost axiomatic 
in their pages. It is true that the Hellenic writers 
do not agree in their pictures of the life beyond the 
grave. Homer, as we have noted elsewhere, has 
vividly described the future world in one of the 
most dramatic passages of the Odyssey, a descrip- 
tion which served as a model to Virgil for the sixth 
book of the Atneid and of which Dante also made 
good use. Homer, like most of his countrymen, 
regarded the future world as a land of shadows 
where existence is not at all as desirable or as real 
as it is here. Nevertheless, this existence pos- 
sesses a reality of its kind, and the ghostlike 
shades of this nether world are gifted with mem- 
ory, with emotions, and with imagination. When 
one listens to the confused and puerile messages 
which our modern mediums purport to bring us 
from the spirit world, he secures an impression of 
that state of existence which is not far removed 
from the picture given in the pages of Homer. 

The religions of the world have in the main fol- 


162 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


lowed three different conceptions in their interpre- 
tations of the future life. In the East, the idea of 
Nirvana or of complete absorption in the Infinite, 
carrying with it the loss of individual existence, has 
always prevailed. In the West, due chiefly to the 
influence of Christianity, the future life has been 
consistently pictured as superior to the present. 
Individuality is not to be swallowed up in the Infin- 
ite, but on the contrary, 1s to be heightened and 
enriched. As the Apostle Paul expressed it, ‘‘It 
doth not yet appear what we shall be.’’ Profes- 
sor Selbie interprets the Western point of view 
admirably when he says: ‘‘ From the point of view 
of religion it must always be remembered that what 
is anticipated in the future is not mere survival, 
but a life of a higher and more desirable kind than 
that of earth.’’ 

The early Greek interpretation occupies a mid- 
dle ground position between the Oriental and the 
Western. Individuals live after death and pre- 
serve their identity, but the future life is neither so 
rich nor so desirable as the present existence. 
This, at any rate, is the general point of view of 
Homer and the poets who belong to his period. 

Among the Greek tragedians, Aeschylus, Sopho- 
eles, and Euripides, the doctrine of the future life 
progresses toward something more typically West- 
ern than the earlier views of Homer. Greek trag- 
edy is chiefly concerned with the power of the 
Fates over human beings and this power extends to 


THE TESTIMONY OF SEERS 163 


the future as well as to the present. The picture 
of the hereafter which Sophocles draws in The 
Antigone is much like that given by Homer. Antig- 
one gives up her own life in order that her broth- 
er’s shade may rest in peace. Her action is not 
made less tragic by any glorification of the reward 
which she will receive hereafter for her piety. The 
general impression of the future which one secures 
from the play is gloomy and pessimistic. This 
holds good in the main of the Greek tragedies 
throughout, although there are occasional glimpses 
of something better, especially in the later poets. 
Euripides is a rebel and a good deal of a skeptic 
whose eschatology is somewhat difficult to deter- 
mine. It is in the writings of Plato, the philos- 
opher-poet of the ages, that we secure the finest 
idealization of the life to come. Plato looks upon 
death as a liberating experience which frees the 
soul from the shackles of material existence. We 
are not really born until we die. The body is a 
clog upon the soul and the latter cannot be free 
and unhampered in our present material existence. 
Plato makes Socrates say in the Phaedo: 

For I am quite ready to acknowledge, Simmias and Cebes, that 
I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded that I am 
going to other gods who are wise and good and to men departed 
who are better than those whom I leave behind; and therefore I do 
not grieve as I might have done, for I have good hope that there 


is yet something remaining for the dead, and as has been said of 
old, some far better thing for the good than for the evil. 


164 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


In Roman poetry we find a distinct advance over 
at least the earlier Hellenic views of immortality. 
Lueretius, it is true, stands out as the one great 
atheistical poet of the ages, but he is practically 
alone among the poets of his own nation in his 
skeptical views concerning the future life. Horace 
was an Hpicurean and was vastly more concerned 
with the pleasures of the present life than with any- 
thing that might conceivably happen to him in the 
future. Nevertheless, he had a tolerably wholesome 
fear of the gods and seems to have entertained the 
usual opinions of his countrymen with regard to 
Tartarus and Elysium. It is in Virgil that we find 
the most definite and specific eschatology of the 
ancient world. The doctrine of future rewards and 
punishments which had been slowly evolving from 
the time of Homer, finds its most complete expres- 
sion in the great epic stanzas of Virgil. So appeal- 
ing was the Roman poet’s view of the future life 
that it was in large measure taken over by the later 
Christian theologians, and Dante appropriates it 
almost bodily in the pages of his Inferno. Dante 
looks upon Virgil as substantially a Christian, and 
the older poet becomes his guide through the devi- 
ous paths of the nether world. 


The poetry of the Middle Ages is practically 
incarnated in the writings of Dante. There are, 
it is true, other great names, but they become 
insignificant by comparison with the great gen- 

~ ius of Florence. The Divine Comedy is not 


THE TESTIMONY OF SEERS 165 


only a poem, but also an interpretation. It 
pictures the spirit of the Middle Ages in the 
most complete and unforgettable fashion. Cath- 
olic Christianity as it existed in the days of 
Anselm and Aquinas and Francis of Assisi was 
interested much more in the future than in the 
present. It was fundamentally other-worldly in 
the full sense of that much abused word. Dante 
reflects this spirit in thoroughgoing fashion in his 
great epic. While Homer and Virgil had devoted 
considerable space to the future world in their 
poems, Dante makes the future life his sole object 
of attention. There can be no doubt but that the 
great Florentine was sincere in what he wrote. He 
believed in immortality and considered it of greater 
importance than any other theme. 


It is impossible within the limitations of the 
present chapter to discuss the contributions of even 
the leading: modern poets to the subject of personal 
immortality. We must confine ourselves to the lt- 
erature of one country alone and to only a few rep- 
resentative names from the galaxy which confronts 
us. English literature begins properly with Chau- 
cer, and from Chaucer to Tennyson and Robert 
Browning English poetry has always taught the 
doctrine of the immortality of the soul. There 
have been a few exceptions of course, but they are 
scarcely worth mentioning. Even Kit Marlowe 
who was considered an atheist in his own day has 
left behind some of the most vivid pictures of the 


166 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


future life in the pages of literature. One can 
scarcely escape the conviction that in Mortimer’s 
farewell words in the play Edward the Second, 
Marlowe’s latest production, the poet is speaking 
out of the depths of his own soul: 


Base Fortune, now I see, that in thy wheel 

There is a point, to which when men aspire, 

They tumble headlong down; that point I touched, 
And seeing there was no place to mount up higher, 
Why should I grieve at my declining fall? 

Farewell, fair queen; weep not for Mortimer, 
That scorns the world, and, as a traveller, 

Goes to discover countries yet unknown. 


The Elizabethan dramatists in general echoed 
similar sentiments. Shakespeare has sometimes 
been cited as an agnostic with regard to the future 
life, but such a view is based upon an incomplete 
induction. For example, Prospero’s words in The 
Tempest 

We are such stuff 


As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep, 


are mistakenly quoted as proving that their author 
regarded death as an eternal sleep. Such critics 
forget that Ariel in the same play says: 

There is nothing that doth fade 


But doth suffer a sea change 
Into something rich and strange. 


Both Jesus and Paul referred to death as a sleep 
without either of them thinking of it as a sleep 
which should never know an awakening. Shakes- 


THE TESTIMONY OF SEERS 167 


peare’s real attitude is brought out pretty thor- 
oughly in Hamlet. Here again the famous third 
soliloquy is quoted as proving that the great dra- 
matist had doubts about the future. It is true that 
Hamlet is pictured as weighing the question of 
suicide and as rather expressing a desire that 
death should be nothing more than an endless sleep. 
Had he been able to bring his judgment into line 
with his desires, he would no doubt have taken his 
own life. The fact that he did not commit suicide 
proves that he at least regarded future existence 
as highly probable. Of course the whole play of 
Hamlet is based upon the idea that there is a fu- 
ture life. The appearances of the ghost of Ham- 
let’s father, the numerous references to prayer 
which the play contains, and the atmosphere of 
the supernatural which envelops it throughout, all 
bear witness to this fact. It is true that Shakes- 
peare’s pictures of the future life are not always at- 
tractive. Claudio, for example, in Measure for 
Measure, says: 


Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; 
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; 

This sensible warm motion to become 

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit 

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; 

To be imprison’d in the viewless winds, 

And blow with restless violence round about 
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst 
Of those that lawless and incertain thought 
Imagine howling: ’tis too horrible! 


168 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment 
Can lay on nature is a paradise 

To what we fear of death. 


It should always be remembered that the above 
lines were spoken in character and that Claudio’s 
life had been such as to justify him in anticipating 
an unpleasant future if the ordinary teachings of 
the church were accepted. The picture itself seems 
to be drawn partly from Dante’s Inferno and 
partly from the Odyssey of Homer. It is one of 
the few illustrations in English literature of a con- 
ception of the future which reinterprets the spirit 
of the old Greek poets. 

The Puritan poets who followed Shakespeare 
were of course thoroughgoing believers in immor- 
tality. Milton, the most outstanding figure of the 
group, is aS much interested in the future life as is 
Dante, although from a different point of view. 
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regawmed and Samson 
Agomstes constitute the great epic trilogy of 
Protestantism as the Inferno, Purgatorio, and 
Paradisio of Dante constitute the great epic of 
Catholicism. Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton, 
the four great epic writers of the world, were all 
profoundly concerned with the problem of immor- 
tality and were all unhesitating believers in a fu- 
ture life. 

English poetry of the Restoration period was 
dominated by the Deistical philosophy of the eight- 


THE TESTIMONY OF SEERS 169 


eenth century to a large extent, and yet there is 
no poet of the period who disputes the fact of per- 
sonal immortality. This was true of Pope and 
Dryden as well as of Goldsmith and Gray. Addi- 
son’s Cato, perhaps the most popular tragedy of 
the period, contains a poetical epitome of Plato’s 
argument for immortality which is one of the most 


famous interpretations of the doctrine: 
The soul, secure in her existence, smiles 
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point. 
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself 
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, 
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, 
Unhurt amidst the war of elements, 
The wrecks of matter, and the crash of worlds. 


Thomas Gray, in his Elegy Written m a Coun- 
try Churchyard, has voiced the orthodox Chris- 
tian views of death and immortality with such 
power and pathos that this poem is sometimes re- 
garded as the most popular poetical production in 
the English language. The poem itself without 
making any specific argument for personal survival 
is steeped in the atmosphere of immortality to 
which direct reference is made in the concluding 
stanza: 


No farther seek his merits to disclose, 
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, 
(There they alike in trembling hope repose), 
The bosom of his Father and his God. 


The poets of the Romantic reaction including 
among others Burns, Cowper, Southey, Coleridge, 


170 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


and Wordsworth were all firm believers in immor- 
tality. Burns delighted in criticizing the foibles 
of the clergy, but he was soundly religious at heart. 
It would be easy to construct a complete eschatol- 
ogy from his poems and there is no doubt about 
his thoroughgoing belief in a future life. In one 
of his best known letters he refers to the picture 
of the redeemed in the concluding verses of the sev- 
enth chapter of the Apocalypse as his favorite pas- 
sage in the Bible. We do not have space to quote 
specific passages from the poems of Burns, but any 
one who will take the trouble to review his lyrics 
will find abundant illustrations of his belief in a 
future life. Wiliam Wordsworth was a disciple 
of Plato and more than any other poet with the 
possible exception of Emerson has embodied. the 
Platonic philosophy in his writings. The most 
popular of his shorter poems deals directly with 
the subject under discussion. It is of course his 
famous Ode on the Intimations of Immortality 
in which he taught along with Plato the doctrine of 
pre-existence as well as that of the future life: 
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; 
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar; 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 


From God, who is our home: 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 


THE TESTIMONY OF SEERS 171 


The poets of the French Revolution, Byron, 
Shelley, and Keats, were all rebels, and yet their 
poems contain many references to immortality. 
Byron, like Burns, took a special delight in eriti- 
cizing orthodox views of religion and morals, but 
he frequently asserts his belief in the life to come. 
For example, in Manfred, where most critics 
agree he identifies his hero with himself, he uses 
this language: 

The mind which is immortal makes itself 
Requital for its good or evil thoughts— 

Is its own origin of ill and end, 

And its own place and time: its innate sense, 
When stripp’d of this mortality, derives 

No color from the fleeting things without; 
But is absorb’d in sufferance or in joy, 

Born from the knowledge of its own desert. 

Shelley, who was more unorthodox than Byron, 
is usually regarded as a Pantheist and some of his 
poems undoubtedly reflect Pantheistic sentiment. 
He was such a devoted admirer of Plato, and Pla- 
tonic allusions occur so often in his writings that 
his Pantheism is not infrequently tinged with the 
coloring of personal immortality. For example, 
the Platonic conception of life as a sort of dream- 
existence which is to be removed at death occurs 
many times in the writings of Shelley in passages 
like this: 

I dare not guess; but in this life 
Of error, ignorance, and strife, 


Where nothing is, but all things seem, 
And we the shadows of the dream, 


Lp HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


It is a modest creed, and yet 
Pleasant if one considers it, 

To own that death itself must be, 
Like all the rest, a mockery. 


Or in even more undisguised fashion: 


Death is the veil which those who live call life. 
We sleep, and it is lifted. 


Keats was not so much of a philosopher as Shel- 
ley, but on the contrary devoted his life to the wor- 
ship of pure beauty. Beauty to him was immortal, 
and he could not think of it as ever passing away. 
His creed is expressed in the famous passage: 


Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 


The question of personal immortality does not 
appear to have concerned him aside from its bear- 
ing upon the problem of the immortality of art. 
Keats, like Shelley and Byron, died young, and his 
views of life were no doubt immature. If we ac- 
cept the idea that aesthetic values are heightened 
by belief in God and immortality as Kant, Hoff- 
ding, and quite recently Lord Balfour in his Gif- 
ford Lectures all agree, then Keats, would assur- 
edly have accepted the gospel of the higher values. 
Certainly it can be said that, as things stand now, 
the poetry of Keats in no way discourages a belief 
in personal immortality. 

The nineteenth century presents an imposing list 
of English poets who were interested in the subject 
of immortality. A few were doubtful or antago- 


THE TESTIMONY OF SEERS 173 


nistic in their attitude, but the vast majority 
preached the gospel of faith and of optimism. On 
the negative side, we must reckon with such names 
as those of Matthew Arnold and Fitzgerald, the 
latter by his remarkable translation of the quat- 
rains of Omar Khayyam providing the greatest 
glorification of materialistic agnosticism in all lit- 
erature. Still more significantly, James Thomson 
in his City of Dreadful Night and Thomas Hardy 
in his shorter poetical productions have re-echoed 
to the full the atheistical pessimism of Schopen- 
hauer. Swinburne occasionally voices a negative 
gospel in his poems. For example, in his melodi- 
ous and beautiful Hymn to Proserpme: 


I know 
I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so. 
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span; 
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man. 
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep, 
For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a 
sleep. 


It should be remembered, however, that this pas- 
sage is spoken in character, being represented as 
the words of one of the priests of the old pagan 
religion which was disappearing before the rapid 
inroads of Christianity. George Eliot in The 
Choir Invisible has illustrated the finest type of 
Positivistic philosophy with its teaching concern- 
ing the immortality of influence. Reference has 
been made elsewhere to this poem and it need not 


174 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


further concern us here. On the whole, the nega- 
tive side of the problem of immortality has had far 
fewer advocates during the nineteenth century 
than the positive. 

When we turn to consider the champions of the 
larger hope during this period, we are confronted 
by a brillant array of names. One need only eata- 
logue a few of them. In the list we find Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning, Coventry Patmore, Dante Ga- 
briel Rossetti, Jean Ingelow, William Morris, 
George Macdonald, William Watson, Francis 
Thompson, Sir Edwin Arnold, Adelaide Procter, 
and the two supreme representatives of the cen- 
tury, Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. All 
of these writers have taught the doctrine of immor- 
tality in one form or another. Our space limita- 
tions will permit us to deal only with three repre- 
sentatives of the group. The three whom we have 
chosen to stand for the others and for the group 
as a whole are Rossetti, Tennyson, and Browning. 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti along with Coventry 
Patmore and Francis Thompson illustrates what 
may be styled the mystical interpretation of the 
future life. It is the spirit of Dante and of the 
best that is in the Catholic faith of the Middle 
Ages. Patmore’s Lyrics, Francis Thompson’s 
The Hound of Heaven, and Rossetti’s The Blessed 
Damosel are all incarnations of this spirit. As an 
illustration of this type of thinking we cite Ros- 


THE TESTIMONY OF SEERS 175 


setti’s sonnet from The House of Infe entitled 
‘*Lost Days’’: 


The lost days of my life until today, 

What were they, could I see them on the street 
Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat 
Sown once for food but trodden into clay? 

Or golden coins squandered and still to pay? 
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet? 

Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat 
The throats of men in Hell, who thirst alway? 


I do not see them here; but after death 

God knows I know the faces I shall see, 

Each one a murdered self, with low last breath. 
““T am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?’’ 
‘And J—and I—thyself,’’ (lo! each one saith), 
‘“And thou thyself to all eternity! ’’ 


If Rossetti represents the mystical and medieval 
attitude toward immortality, in the person of Al- 
fred Tennyson we find a complete incarnation of 
what may be styled orthodox critical Protestant- 
ism. He was born and bred in the atmosphere of 
the church and never wandered away from it dur- 
ing his long lifetime. While this was true, he 
never lived in the cloister-like seclusion of the 
Catholic mystics, but on the contrary kept his mind 
singularly open to every new current of thought. 
He lived during a time of stress both in the scien- 
tific and theological realm. He was a contempo- 
rary of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Comte, and 
Haeckel, and was familiar with their writings. It 
was inevitable that a mind such as his should re- 


176 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


flect the cross currents of intellectual opinion in 
his poems. There is scarcely one of his larger pro- 
ductions which does not touch upon the subject of 
immortality, but it is in his In Memoriam that we 
find the most complete exposition of the poet’s 
views. In Memoriam deals with all the current 
scientific doubts which were raised in large meas- 
ure by the publication of The Origin of Species 
and endeavors to find a solution for them. The 
poem has a direct personal reference, and yet it 
is peculiarly typical of the thought of English 
Protestantism as a whole. ‘Tennyson does not 
shrink from the issue, but faces it through. Doubt- 
less he has some sorrows when the battle is over, 
but few reasonable people will deny that he comes 
out a victor. Until immortality passes over from 
the realm of faith to the realm of exact science, 
stanzas like these will continue to be a part of the 
mental furniture of every thoughtful advocate of 
the future life: 
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: 
Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
He thinks he was not made to die; 


And thou hast made him: thou art just. 


* * * * * 
My own dim life should teach me this, 
That life shall live for evermore, 
Else earth is darkness at the core, 

And dust and ashes all that is. 


From In Memoriam to Crossing the Bar, Tenny- 
son held to his faith. He struggled hard at times 


THE TESTIMONY OF SEERS 177 


with doubt and there are occasional notes of pes- 
simism in the two Locksley Halls, in Maud and 
above all in The Idylls of the King, but he never 
surrendered. The epitome of his long and battle- 
scarred experience is found in the last word of his 
old age: 
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place 
The flood may bear me far, 


I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
When I have crost the bar. 


As Tennyson represents the views of modern 
orthodox Protestantism, so Robert Browning 
stands out as the incarnation of Christianity in its 
more liberal and broader philosophical aspects. 
Browning was never precisely a churchman, and 
yet he was a thoroughgoing believer in Christian- 
ity. He was preeminently a philosopher and an 
artist and he could see the good sides of the two 
extremes embodied in Roman Catholic mysticism 
and modern ultra-Protestant rationalism. His 
doctrine of immortality is much more robust than 
is that of Tennyson and is a more powerful ad- 
junect to faith. Where Tennyson hopes for immor- 
tality, Browning believes in it and refuses to en- 
tertain any doubts upon the subject. There is no 
theme which occupies his attention so often or 
which is so emphatically dealt with in his poems as 
the doctrine of personal immortality. Like Tenny- 
son, there were times during his later middle life 
when he concerned himself with agnosticism and 


178 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


the current skepticism of his day, but there is noth- 
ing to show that these studies caused any serious 
change in his attitude toward the future life. 
There is scarcely a possible phase of immortality 
which Browning has not discussed somewhere in 
his writings. We have space for only a few typ- 
ical citations. For example, the problem of where 
in this present life we are to start in the new 
existence is dealt with in Cristina: 
Such am I: the secret’s mine now! 
She has lost me, I have gained her; 
Her soul’s mine: and thus, grown perfect, 
I shall pass my life’s remainder. 
Life will just hold out the proving 
Both our powers, alone and blended: 


And then, come the next life quickly! 
This world’s use will have been ended. 


In other words, life in the world to come will 
take its starting point from the highest rather than 
from the latest point of our earthly existence. 


What the experience we call death is like from 
the standpoint of those who have passed through 
it occupied Browning’s attention a good deal. He 
pictures it in dramatic fashion in Prospice: 


For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, 
The black minute’s at end, 

And the elements’ rage, the fiend-voices that rave, 
Shall dwindle, shall blend, 

Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, 
Then a light, then thy breast, 

O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, 
And with God be the rest! 


THE TESTIMONY OF SEERS 179 


The problem of marriage in the future life which 
so disturbed the reflections of the Sadducees 
Browning answers in his own peculiar fashion in 
the concluding words of the section entitled ‘‘ Pom- 
pilia’’ in The Ring and the Book: 


Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit, 
Mere imitation of the inimitable: 

In heaven we have the real and true and sure. 
’Tis there they neither marry nor are given 

In marriage but are as the angels: right, 

Oh how right that is, how like Jesus Christ 

To say that! Marriage-making for the earth, 
With gold so much—birth, power, repute so much, 
Or beauty, youth so much, in lack of these! 

Be as the angels rather, who, apart, 

Know themselves into one, are found at length 
Married, but marry never, no, nor give 

In marriage; they are man and wife at once 
When the true time is: here we have to wait 
Not so long neither! Could we by a wish 
Have what we will and get the future now, 
Would we wish aught done undone in the past? 
So, let him wait God’s instant men call years; 
Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul, 
Do out the duty! 


The question as to what is to become of the bad 
people after death is also dealt with in The Ring 
and the Book. Browning did not accept the ortho- 
dox teaching concerning hell, but looked with favor 
upon Origen’s doctrine of the final purification and 
restitution of the wicked. In the section entitled 
‘“The Pope”’ in The Ring and the Book he has this 
to say concerning the fate of Guido, the villain of 


180 


HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


the poem, and the worst man Browning can con- 


ceive: 


For the main criminal I have no hope 

Except in such a suddenness of fate. 

I stood at Naples once, a night so dark 

I could have scarce conjectured there was earth 
Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all: 

But the night’s black was burst through by a blaze— 
Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, 
Through her whole length of mountains visible: 
There lay the city thick and plain with spires, 

And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. 

So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, 

And Guido see, one instant, and be saved. 

Else I avert my face, nor follow him 

Into that sad obscure sequestered state 

Where God unmakes but to remake the soul 

He else made first in vain; which must not be. 


Will there be memory and recognition after 
death? Browning says so unhesitatingly. Per- 
haps the most picturesque fashion in which he has 
answered the question is to be found in one of his 
most popular poems, ‘**‘ Hivelyn Hope’’: 


I loved you, Evelyn, all the while! 


My heart seemed full as it could hold; 


There was place and to spare for the frank young smile, 


And the red young mouth, and the hair’s young gold. 


So hush,—I will give you this leaf to keep: 


See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand! 


There, that is our secret: go to sleep! 


You will wake, and remember, and understand. 


The most complete expression of Browning’s 
philosophy in its application both to the present 
world and the world to come is to be found in 


THE TESTIMONY OF SEERS 181 


‘‘Rabbi Ben Ezra.’’ This poem teaches the doc- 
trine that the present life is intended solely as an 
introduction to the larger and fuller life to come, 
that all values created here will be preserved after 
death, and that even the smallest good will never 
be lost. This poem may be styled a poetical expo- 
sition of Hoffding’s philosophy of religion, al- 
though Browning appears to have had no direct 
connection whatever with the Danish philosopher. 
The underlying idea of both writers is that of the 
absolute preservation of values. Let us note how 
Browning teaches this doctrine in his poem: 


And I shall thereupon 

Take rest, ere I be gone 

Once more on my adventure brave and new: 
Fearless and unperplexed, 

When I wage battle next, 

What weapons to select, what armor to indue. 


* * * * * * * 


He fixed thee ’mid this dance 

Of plastic circumstance, 

This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest: 
Machinery just meant 

To give thy soul its bent, 

Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. 


* * * * * * * 


Fool! All that is, at all, 
Lasts ever, past recall; 
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure. 


Browning retained his faith in personal immor~ 
tality throughout his life. It is interesting to com- 
pare his epilogue written only a few days before 


182 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


his death with Tennyson’s ‘‘Crossing the Bar,’’ 
which was produced under similar circumstances. 
Both poems are magnificent contributions to what 
may be styled the literature of immortality, but 
there can scarcely be any question that Browning’s 
confession is the more positive and robust of the 
two. Tennyson hopes to meet his Pilot, but Brown- | 
ing calls the opponents of immortality fools and 
never doubts that when he shall fall asleep, it will 
be to wake. To quote his own language: 


One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, 
Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake. 


No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s work-time 
Greet the unseen with a cheer! 
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 
‘Strive and thrive!’’ ery ‘‘Speed,—fight on, fare ever 
There as here! ’’ 


This chapter is already too lengthy to permit any 
discussion of the subject from the standpoint of 
American literature. It would be an easy and alto- 
gether delightful task to show how the American 
poets have emphasized the future life in their writ- 
ings. From ‘‘Thanatopsis’’ to ‘‘General William 
Booth Enters Heaven’’ the subject has received at- 
tention. Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, 
Alice Cary, Poe, Lanier, and a host of others have 
expressed sentiments similar to those of Tennyson 


THE TESTIMONY OF SEERS 183 


and Browning. There is scarcely a dissenting note 
unless it be in the work of Walt Whitman, and 
there are passages in Whitman which seem to sup- 
port the doctrine. The unanimity of opinion upon 
the subject is even more noticeable in American 
literature than it is on the other side of the Atlan- 
tic. 

As we stated at the beginning of this chapter, 
the poets are seers. In the nature of the case, they 
deal more with faith than with scientific fact. 
Their confidence in the permanent existence of the 
human spirit should encourage the rest of us to 
share in their faith. To believe that throughout 
the ages they have been so universally mistaken, 
that they have been false prophets concerning the 
future, and that therefore their messages have 
been untrustworthy and vain assuredly requires a 
degree of pessimism which is neither necessary nor 
natural. Over against the testimony of the agnos- 
tics and skeptics of the ages we place the experi- 
ence of the forward looking seers and prophets of 
the world. 


REFERENCES 


. Book of Job. 

. Homer, Odyssey, Chapter XIII. 

Sophocles, Antigone. 

Plato, Dialogs, translated by Jowett, Vol. I. 

Virgil, Aeneid, Book VI. 

Dante, Divine Comedy. 

. Marlowe, Edward II, Act V. 

. Shakespeare, The Tempest, Hamlet, Measure for Measure. 


Go IS OTA PO 


184 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


9. Milton, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, 
Lycidas. 

10. Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. 

11. Wordsworth, Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. 

12. Byron, Manfred, Act V. 

13. Shelley, The Sensitive Plant. 

14. D. G. Rossetti, The House of Life. 

15. F. Thompson, The Hound of Heaven. 

16. Tennyson, In Memoriam, Crossing the Bar. 

17. R. Browning, Cristina, The Ring and the Book, Evelyn 
Hope, Prospice, Epilogue, Rabbi Ben Ezra. 


CHAPTER XVI 
THE TESTIMONY OF THE SAINTS 


LT was at one time asserted that the belief in 

immortality is a universal heritage of mankind. 
Obviously such an assertion is not in harmony with 
the facts. Multitudes of people especially in the 
far Kast do not possess such a belief, and appar- 
ently do not desire continued personal existence 
beyond the grave. Some of the great religious 
leaders of the world have not believed in personal 
immortality. The founder of Buddhism ig gener- 
ally regarded as belonging to this class. Confucius 
also had very little to say about the future life. 
There is a good deal of divergence concerning the 
meaning of Nirvana. It is true that in a recent 
article in the Hibbert Journal of January, 1925, by 
Mr. Edmund Holmes, the position is taken that the 
idea of Nirvana does not at all involve the thought 
of personal annihilation. On the contrary, Mr. 
Holmes asserts that it meant a clarification and 
expansion of the individual spirit closely akin to 
the Christian conception. If this interpretation is 
correct, and Mr. Holmes is not alone in accepting 
it, then the religions of the East cannot be re- 
garded as antagonistic to the doctrine of personal 


survival. 
185 


186 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


Whatever view may be taken concerning the 
meaning of Nirvana, it is obvious that practically 
all of the religious leaders of the world who came 
from the nations west of India believed in the im- 
mortality of the soul. Zoroaster, Socrates, Plato, 
and the religious leaders of Egypt, Rome, and 
other western countries are all included in this 
class. The one exception appears to be in the case 
of the Hebrews, and this exception is dubious. To 
assert that Moses and the prophets who followed 
him did not believe in personal immortality is 
scarcely justified in view of the statements of Jesus 
and the New Testament attitude in general. It 
appears to be true that the Jewish people as a 
whole did not accept the doctrine of immortality in 
the earlier periods of their history, but the prevail- 
ing religious party of the nation came to accept 
this view later, and there is nothing to prove that 
the forward looking leaders of the nation did not 
believe in a future life long before such a belief 
became a part of the spiritual possessions of the 
rank and file. In any event, Christianity, which 
sprang out of Judaism, has championed the doc- 
trine of immortality with an enthusiasm equalled 
by the advocates of no other religion save that of 
Mahomet. Many of the advocates of modern 
Judaism are firm believers in immortality, al- 
though it is only fair to say that others do not 
accept the doctrine. The chief difficulty in the way 
of a belief in the future life on the part of the 


THE TESTIMONY OF THE SAINTS 187 


ancient Hebrews appears to have been their in- 
tense glorification of Yahweh which did not permit 
human beings to aspire to immortality along with 
Him. There is a certain sense in which there are 
affinities at this point between the Hebrew and the 
Hindu faiths, although we ordinarily think of them 
as incarnating the opposite poles of extreme reli- 
gious transcendence and immanence. Moreover, 
as we have already observed, the Hebrews even far 
back in their history did have a sort of shadowy 
belief in another world which they denominated 
Sheol, the place of the departed spirits. Perhaps 
the average Hebrew of the early centuries thought 
of Sheol much as Homer and his contemporaries 
thought of Hades. If this be true, we can under- 
stand why the Hebrew writers placed such little 
emphasis upon the future life. Existence in Sheol, 
as Homer pictured existence in Hades, was to be 
dreaded rather than to be desired, and it was pref- 
erable to refer to it as little as possible. There 
may have been a feeling of this kind back of the 
aversion of Confucius to any discussion of the fu- 
ture life. While an attitude of this kind does not 
represent a satisfactory view of immortality from 
the Christian standpoint, it can hardly be said to 
be a denial of the doctrine. It is scarcely fair, 
therefore, to cite religious teachers who accepted 
this view, and for this reason said little about im- 
mortality as being opposed to the doctrine. 


Making all allowances for exceptional skeptics 


188 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


and unbelievers, it is certainly no exaggeration to 
say that the overwhelming majority of the world’s 
religious teachers and saints have been firm be- 
hevers in a future life. Not only is this true, but 
it has been characteristic of their faith in immor- 
tality that it has in most cases passed over into 
the realm of assurance and has become almost as 
strong as their consciousness of the ordinary facts 
of experience. This vital faith in the hereafter on 
the part of so many people is a phenomenon with 
which modern science can no longer refuse to deal. 
The new science of the psychology of religion ree- 
ognizes this situation fully, and deals with it in 
accordance with scientific methods. Of course, no 
one would assert that because a large number of 
people, or for that matter all people believed in a 
certain doctrine, that this fact would prove the doc- 
trine to be true. It is quite conceivable that every- 
body may hold or may have held to erroneous 
views. The chief difference in the present instance 
consists in the fact that the mystical experience of 
immortality which the saints claim to have pos- 
sessed is not at all of the same type as a mere intel- 
lectual hypothesis or opinion. The saints believed 
in immortality not because of logical arguments in 
its favor, but because of an inward conviction of 
its reality. Here we touch upon the whole subject 
of mysticism which our modern psychologists, in- 
cluding especially James, Starbuck, Pratt, and 
Thouless have treated so extensively. Whatever 


THE TESTIMONY OF THE SAINTS 189 


interpretation of mystical experience we may ac- 
cept, the facts involved can scarcely be dismissed 
as inconsequential. It is with some of these facts 
that the present chapter has to deal. It is con- 
ceded that they do not furnish scientific proof of 
the reality of the future life, but it can scarcely be 
denied that they do supply evidence which should 
help to strengthen one’s belief in immortality. 
Doubtless the most obvious illustration of a con- 
scious realization of immortality in the present 
life is to be found in the experience of Jesus Him- 
self. Nothing seems clearer than the fact that He 
regarded the present life as a mere interlude in the 
larger life of the spirit. His constant effort was to 
induce His followers to accept the eternal view- 
points as a guide to their daily actions instead of 
looking at things from the ordinary temporal point 
of view. Even more than Spinoza, who interpreted 
the idea in a different way, he insisted upon seeing 
everything under the form of eternity. Men were 
to strive to lay up treasures in heaven rather than 
upon earth because the heavenly life is of more sig- 
nificance than the earthly. Jesus himself never 
worried much about material things, and literally 
embodied Harnack’s definition of religion as eter- 
nal life in the midst of time. He was in the world, 
and yet not of the world because He knew that His 
life was not to be cut short by death. In the Johan- 
nine writings, this idea of conscious immortality 
on the part of Jesus is brought out in the greatest 


190 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


detail, but it is not absent from the Synopties. 
Jesus possessed such a complete consciousness of 
His own immortality that a realization of this fact 
is essential to any proper understanding of His 
teaching and work. 

Paul, next to his Master, possessed perhaps the 
most thoroughgoing consciousness of immortality. 
Paul’s conviction of the reality of the future life 
was based in part, it is true, upon logic and philos- 
ophy, but in the last analysis he fell back upon his 
mystical experience as the final proof of the doc- 
trine. He is so sure of the future life that, like 
Browning’s grammarian again, he is willing to 
stake everything upon it. He counts everything 
but loss provided he ean be sure of eternal life. 
This is the supreme treasure, and he has no doubt 
about its reality. At the very last, he stands firm, 
and there is no tinge of regret in his farewell mes- 
sage to the world. There is a crown of righteous- 
ness laid up for him, and he is quite sure that he 
will receive it. 

John and the other apostles bear testimony sim- 
ilar to that of Paul concerning their assurance of 
personal immortality. With John, as we have 
noted elsewhere, it is the certainty of union with 
the divine life which is primarily back of this as- 
surance. The Johannine writings throughout the 
ages have been regarded quite properly as the 
most valuable sources of mystical inspiration and 
conviction, There is a quiet assurance of the real- 


THE TESTIMONY OF THE SAINTS 191 


ity of eternal life which pervades these documents 
and which carries conviction to those who are not 
too skeptically minded to recognize its presence. 
Mr. W. K. Fleming in dealing with this question in 
his volume on Mysticism m Christianity says of the 
fourth gospel that it has been styled ‘‘the charter 
of mysticism.’’ The symbolism with which it 
abounds is fundamentally mystical, and the logos 
doctrine which it stresses is of the same type. In 
the Johannine writings, immortality is assumed so 
completely and unhesitatingly that no logical argu- 
ments are advanced in its favor. Paul occasionally 
debates the question, as for example in First Co- 
rinthians, chapter 15, but John does not argue 
about it. He is concerned about proving the iden- 
tity of Jesus with the Divine Logos, and is quite 
sure that if he can do this, everything else follows 
as a matter of course. 

The early Christians accepted the doctrine of 
immortality in much the same fashion as John and 
Paul. Better than any historical documents, those 
rude inscriptions in the Catacombs tell the story 
of triumphant faith. Many of those whose names 
are recorded in these underground tombs were 
martyrs during the stormy years of persecution 
and sealed their faith with their blood. The ab- 
solute assurance of immortality which they pos- 
sessed and which enabled them to go to the stake 
and to the cross with triumphant joy remains as 
an evidence of the reality of Christian experience 


192 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


in these early centuries. There would have been 
few martyrs if these early Christians had felt any 
doubt concerning the reality of the future life. 
They triumphed over death and torture because 
they were sure that the sufferings of this present 
life are not to be compared with the glory that shall 
be revealed hereafter. Of course they may have 
been mistaken; every cause, true or false, has had 
its martyrs, but the unanimity of their experience 
should possess corroborative value along with other 
evidence in favor of the Christian doctrine of im- 
mortality. 

Among these early martyrs, one of the most 
notable was Ignatius who according to tradition 
was thrown to the lions at Rome about 115 A.D. 
In the Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans he begs 
his fellow Christians not to prevent his martyrdom, 
as by so doing they will deprive him of the glorious 
reward which awaits him in eternity. He says: 

But I fear your love, lest it do me an injury. For it is easy 


for you to do what you please; but it will be hard for me to attain 


unto God, if you spare me. 

But I would not that ye should please men, but God, whom also 
ye do please. For neither shall I ever hereafter have such an 
opportunity of going unto God; nor will you, if ye shall now be 
silent, ever be entitled to a better work. For if you shall be 
silent in my behalf, I shall be made partaker of God. 

But if you shall love my body, I shall have my course again to 
run. Wherefore ye cannot do me a greater kindness, than to suffer 
me to be sacrificed unto God, now that the altar is already pre- 
pared: 

That when ye shall be gathered together in love, ye may give 
thanks to the Father through Christ Jesus. 


THE TESTIMONY OF THE SAINTS 193 


St. Augustine is usually regarded as the greatest 
figure in Catholic theology. From the standpoint 
of present day thought most of the dogmas which 
he advocated appear singularly unreal and impos- 
sible. Nevertheless, Augustine will always be an 
appealing figure because of the strangely personal 
mysticism which he has enshrined in his Confes- 
stons. The theology of this famous volume is its 
least significant feature. It is its mysticism which 
remains fresh and vital after the lapse of centuries. 
Augustine felt personally conscious both of the 
presence of God and of the certainty of eternal 
life. The heart of his experience is disclosed in the 
famous quotation from the Confessions: ‘‘We have 
come from Thee, O God, and our souls shall find no 
rest until we return to Thee again.”’ 

One of the most notable passages in the book 
deals with his farewell conversation with his 
mother: 


As now the day drew nigh, when she should depart out of this 
life * * * * together we held converse very sweet and ‘‘for- 
getting those things which were behind and reaching forth unto 
those things which were before’’ we were discussing between us 
in the presence of the truth, which Thou art, of what kind would 
be that eternal life of the Saints, which ‘‘eye hath not seen nor 
ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man’’ * * * * 
And further still we climbed, in inner speech and thought, and 
in the wonder of Thy works, and we reached to our own minds 
and passed beyond them, so as to touch the realm of plenty, where 
Thou feedest Israel for ever in the pasture of the truth, and where 
life is that Wisdom, by which all things are made, both those 
which have been, and those which shall be; and Itself is not made, 
but is now as it was, and ever shall be; or rather it is eternal. 


194 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


Along with the Confessions of St. Augustine, 
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis still 
holds its place as one of the great devotional 
classics of the ages. The author, whose identity 
is more or less uncertain, was evidently a man of 
profound religious experience who felt personally 
conscious of the reality of the future life. We have 
space for only a few brief quotations from his 


pages: 


Direct thither day by day your sighs, your prayers, your tears, 
that your spirit after death may be worthy to pass with joy into 
the presence of your Lord. 

You shall not say then, ‘‘Who shall deliver me from the body 
of this death?’’ neither shall you cry, ‘‘Woe is me, that my 
sojourning is prolonged’’ for death shall be swallowed up in 
victory, and health shall be unfailing and there shall be no more 
anxiety, but blessed joy, and sweet and lovely companionship. 

In all things look to the end, and remember that you will have 
to stand before a strict Judge, from Whom nothing is hidden, Who 
is not to be bribed by gifts, and Who will admit no excuses, but 
will judge according to that which is right. 


It would be easy to multiply quotations like these 
from the pages of all the great mystics. As Augus- 
tine and a Kempis wrote and taught, so taught 
Bernard, and Francis and Kckhart and Tauler and 
Suso and Ruysbroek and Rolle and Catherine of 
Sienna and St. John of the Cross and Traherne and 
Crashaw and Bunyan and Behmen and Fox and 
Wesley and Coventry Patmore and all the other 
names which are associated with what William 
James calls the twice-born type of religious ex- 
perience. All these men and countless others who 


THE TESTIMONY OF THE SAINTS 195 


have enjoyed similar experiences testify to the 
reality of their convictions concerning a future life. 
No one of them believed for a moment that this 
earthly experience is all that pertaing to the life 
of a Christian. Like the author of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, they all felt sure that they had no 
abiding city here, but they sought one to come. 
Again we say, the saints of the ages, like the seers, 
by the joyous and confident testimony which they 
have borne to the reality of the eternal hope should 
help to inspire faith within us. One thing is cer- 
tain, and that is that if we accept the doctrine of 
immortality, we shall always be in good company. 

The writer believes that at some time, perhaps 
in the not too distant future, the fact of personal 
immortality will be scientifically demonstrated. 
When that time comes, it will no longer be possible 
to east aspersions upon the daring souls who 
through the power of faith laid hold of the treasures 
of eternity. The great value of religion consists 
in the fact that it enables us to appropriate real- 
ities which science cannot reach. These realities 
are of supreme importance for the daily ordering of 
our lives. The conviction of life beyond the grave 
belongs to this group. Some day it will be recog- 
nized as a fact which no one can dispute. For the 
present, it is simply a datum of faith. Through the 
power of the will to believe, we may reject it if 
we so desire, but we take this step in opposition to 
a mass of evidence which should give us pause. 


196 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


After all, what do we gain by willing to disbelieve 
in immortality? The heritage of the beast of the 
field and the chosen refuge of those who have failed 
in life’s battle and who are afraid to face the 
future. Is it not better like Robert Browning to 
‘‘oreet the unseen with a cheer’’ in full and joyous 
expectation of that higher and nobler existence 
which is our true birthright and heritage? 


REFERENCES 


1. W. K. Fleming, Mysticism in Christianity, Chapters I-III. 

2. St. Augustine, Confessions. 

3. Thomas & Kempis, The Imitation of Christ. 

4. St. Ignatius, The Epistle to the Romans. 

5. George Fox, Journal. 

6. John Wesley, Journal. 

7. Madame Guyon, Letters. 

8. John Bunyan, Grace Abounding. 

9. E. Underhill, Mysticism. 

10. E. Holmes, Our Debt to the Ancient Wisdom of India (Hib- 
bert Journal, Jan., 1925). 


CHAPTER XVII 
THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION 


EK have discussed earlier in this book the his- 

torical aspects of the Christian idea of immor- 
tality. We have tried to indicate something con- 
cerning the nature of the doctrine as it is to be 
found in the gospel record and in the early Pauline 
and Johannine writings. In the historical sketch 
which we have attempted to draw, no special ref- 
erence has been made to the significance of the res- 
urrection teaching as a vital feature of Christian 
doctrine. It would be altogether unfair to bring a 
book like this to its close without stating the facts 
concerning the Christian gospel of the resurrection 
and the part which that gospel has played in the 
world-wide expansion of Christianity. 

The early Christian message was made up of two 
fundamental characteristics. Beyond any question 
it taught a new ethic, the way of love. The Sermon 
on the Mount and the Kingdom teaching of Jesus 
in general bear abundant testimony to the signif- 
icance of this side of the new teaching. Neverthe- 
less, it appears clear that if the gospel proclaimed 
by the early apostles had contained nothing more 
than the ethical message of Jesus it would never 
have conquered the world. Important as that mes- 

197 


198 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


sage is and was, it does not contain, nor did it ever 
contain, the dynamic which is necessary to explain 
the rapid expansion of Christianity during the sec- 
ond and third centuries, A.D. Gibbon, in his De- 
cline and Fall of the Roman Empire, has elaborated 
the causes which, in his judgment, were responsible 
for the triumph of the new religion over the time- 
honored cults of the ancient world. Without at- 
tempting to analyze the carefully developed ex- 
planation which he has given, it may suffice to say 
that the primary cause is easy to deduce from the 
pages of the New Testament itself. The gospel 
conquered the world because it delivered men from 
the fear of death and from the power of the grave. 
This explanation may be drawn from all of the 
Pauline writings, and it requires only the most 
casual reflection for one to see that it is the only 
adequate solution of the problem. 

The ancient world, when Christianity was born, 
was weary and careworn and sated with sensual 
pleasure and metaphysical speculation. Men had 
tried every new avenue of material enjoyment and 
had discovered that in the end all of them led to 
ennui or despair. They had sought by philosophy, 
and it must be conceded that their speculations 
were of the most brilliant and fascinating charac- 
ter, to find out God and to penetrate the mystery of 
death with the result that all their efforts had 
achieved only a mocking failure. Everywhere 


THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION 199 


there was the shadow of the grave. Epicurus and 
his followers tried to make little of the fear of 
death, but it is doubtful whether even the philos- 
opher himself succeeded in extracting comfort 
from his own arguments. The Stoics tried to steel 
themselves against death by rising superior to it, 
but the best they could do was to practice the glori- 
fication of suicide as a token of victory. While the 
teaching of men lke Epictetus and Marcus Aure- 
hus possesses marvelous sublimity and certain feat- 
ures which may be justly styled heroic, it is in 
substance a gospel of despair, and it produces an 
atmosphere of despondency and gloom wherever it 
is accepted. The pictures of life during the early 
Roman Empire which have come down to us fully 
justify these conclusions. The cultured classes 
were either Stoics or Epicureans in their thinking, 
and to whichever group they belonged, life was 
equally tedious and unbearable. In their pessi- 
mism and despair the Roman nobles plunged into 
the worst sort of excesses and thereby hastened 
the doom of their civilization. 

Among the common people the situation was 
even worse. Most of them were slaves, and the lot 
of a slave in ancient times was wretched beyond 
the power of imagination. Torture and death were 
constantly before him, his life was a season of un- 
ending toil, and he had no hope of anything better 
after the present life had come to an end. The 


200 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


situation in Rome was more serious at this time 
than it had been in the early years of the Republic. 
Then, at least, men believed in the gods and in 
some sort of existence hereafter. Now the old 
mythologies of the past had become obsolete, and 
there was nothing but philosophy to take their 
place. Philosophy the man on the street could not 
understand, and when he saw that it brought no 
comfort to his master who could understand it he 
had no desire to probe its secrets. On all sides 
there were only weariness, despair, and death. It 
was no wonder that suicide became so prevalent 
throughout the empire. Life was difficult to bear 
under such appalling circumstances. In spite of 
the fact that the ancient world was swept by pesti- 
lence and war to such an extent that the average 
span of existence was much below what it is today, 
multitudes could not endure life to its natural and 
normal end. One needs only to read the dismal 
pages of Suetonius or Tacitus to realize how dark 
was the horizon which confronted practically every 
citizen of the empire during the age of its most 
splendid civilization. 

Into this atmosphere of doubt and despair, of 
suicide and of death, came the clear note of the res- 
urrection gospel. It was something altogether 
new, something which had power to drive away 
despair and to put in its place life and hope. The 
sionificant thing about the resurrection preaching 


THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION 201 


was its appeal to plain facts. Greeks and Romans 
alike were surfeited with argument and had come 
to realize its utter futility as a means of consola- 
tion. Plato and Socrates and Aristotle had pro- 
duced the best of reasons why the soul should be 
immortal, but their reasons were all theoretical and 
nobody could show that the facts corresponded to 
their speculations. To prove that the soul ought to 
be immortal and that it actually is immortal are 
two different things. Plato did the one and Jesus 
Christ the other. In the last analysis it was the 
Christian demonstration which counted. The 
proofs of the resurrection were not philosophical 
or speculative but scientific and practical. The 
gospel preachers were either witnesses of the fact 
or so intimately acquainted with the actual wit- 
nesses that their testimony amounted to the same 
thing. It was this note of assurance, this certainty 
of conviction, which carried the gospel into the 
very heart of the ancient world. Men did not want 
to die—they wanted to live, and here alone eternal 
life was offered to them. Was it any wonder that 
they grasped it, held to it, and rejoiced in the privi- 
lege of going to the arena or to the cross rather 
than to give it up? It was the gospel of the resur- 
rection and not the gospel of the Kingdom, using 
the latter term in its ordinary social and ethical 
significance, which broke down the battlements of 
heathenism in the Graeco-Roman world. 


202 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


The men who preached this gospel believed in it. 
Of this fact there can be no doubt. The fifteenth 
chapter of First Corinthians represents one of 
the earliest documents of the New Testament, and 
no one can read the vivid and eloquent passages 
which it contains*without realizing that the man 
who wrote these words was terribly in earnest. 
Paul undoubtedly believed in the social gospel, as 
the thirteenth chapter of this same epistle abun- 
dantly proves. It was not the social gospel, how- 
ever, which made him willing to give his body to 
be burned. He says in the most direct fashion that 
if the dead rise not, he and his followers are of all 
men most pitiable. Nothing could be more striking 
than his emphasis upon the cardinal place which 
the resurrection teaching occupies in his gospel. 
The gospel itself is nothing more than the death, 
burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, with, of 
course, the consequent corollary that these facts 
guarantee our own resurrection from the grave. If 
the gospel of the resurrection be not true, then 
Paul characterizes his own preaching as folly, and 
the position of his converts as hopeless. The res- 
urrection is not an incident but is rather the cor- 
ner stone of the entire gospel. Assuredly conelu- 
sions such as these represent the Pauline temper 
not only in this but in practically all of the other 
epistles which are ascribed to him in the New Tes- 
tament. In Philippians, written some years after, 


THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION 203 


and presumably near the close of his life, he con- 
siders death as gain not because it will bring sur- 
cease of sorrow or pain, but because it will mean 
the beginning of a new and more glorious exist- 
ence. It would be quite futile to quote similar pas- 
sages from the other epistles inasmuch as this atti- 
tude may be said to be one of the few undisputed 
characteristics in the life of the great Apostle. 
Paul was of course familiar with the stock ob- 
jections to his position. These objections were 
apparently much the same two thousand years ago 
as they are today. They relate chiefly to the man- 
ner and character of the resurrection. ‘*‘How are 
the dead raised up, and with what body do they 
rise?’’ represents the skeptical criticism of Hume 
no less than the incredulity of all modern mate- 
rialism. It is when one attempts to image the life 
beyond that the difficulties begin. Obviously we 
are here attempting the impossible, and should not 
be disappointed when we fail to secure satisfactory 
results. The life beyond is not like life here, at 
least in the sense that our earthly categories fail 
to interpret it, and inasmuch as the higher cate- 
gories are not as yet in our possession we are help- 
less in our efforts to image the future. Paul under- 
stood this, and yet it did not disturb his faith. The 
objection, in fact, seemed to him so unwarranted 
that he uses rather strong language in meeting it. 
‘‘Thou fool,’’ he replies to the objectors, and then 


204 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


proceeds to justify his using the epithet. In sub- 
stance his argument is that lfe in this world 
is dependent upon death, and even here there are 
multitudinous varieties of bodies, all of them ap- 
propriate to the uses of life. If the lower life of 
the plant and the animal finds appropriate bodily 
expression, how improbable, nay, how absurd it is 
to think of the higher life of the spirit as incapable 
of securing an appropriate body. Paul nowhere 
teaches the doctrine of discarnate spirits. The 
soul has its body in this world, and it will have a 
body in the world to come. This body will be of a 
different and higher kind, but it will be a body. 
The word itself is of course unsatisfactory inas- 
much as it seems to carry with it a distinctly mate- 
rial or physical connotation. And yet there ap- 
pears to be nothing more satisfactory at our 
command. Paul attempts to get rid of the diff- 
culty by using the phrase, ‘‘a spiritual body,’’ and 
contrasts it with the natural body known to our 
present senses. The term ‘‘spiritual body”’ is, 
however, in itself contradictory so the difficulty is 
not entirely removed by using it. 

Modern psychologists and philosophers like 
Count Keyserling and Professor Broad are quite 
Pauline in their emphasis upon the reality of the 
thinking spirit. The former, with Bergson, would 
have us believe that it is the spirit which creates 
the body rather than the opposite, and that the 


THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION 205 


process which really goes on in the present world 
simply repeats itself on a higher scale and in more 
wonderful fashion in the world to come. If the 
spirit can create its own body here, surely it can 
do no less hereafter. It is not the body which 
grows the spirit but it is the spirit which grows 
the body. After all, there is little difference be- 
tween this view and the eschatology of the fifteenth 
chapter of First Corinthians. Professor Broad 
too thinks that the mind survives the physical 
structure after the latter passes away, but does not 
believe that it can create another body. It remains 
for an indefinite time without a home, occasionally 
returning to earth in the form of mediumistic pos- 
session, and eventually appears to dissolve into 
nothingness. If it could be furnished with a body 
appropriate to its needs, apparently it might go on 
living in the future world just as it previously 
lived in this one. Professor Broad refuses to ac- 
cept the Christian hypothesis that such a body is 
provided for those who fall asleep in the hope of 
the resurrection. The difference between him and 
the orthodox Christian at this point is simply a 
matter of faith. He refuses to believe that a body 
will be provided for the spirit when the latter 
passes into eternity. He does not dispute the fact 
that the spirit exists as a real entity, and the fur- 
ther fact that it actually passes into the unseen 
world. These things he regards as scientifically 


206 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


demonstrated. It is doubtful whether any Chris- 
tian ought to ask more from science than Dr. Broad 
has granted. Obviously the only way in which we 
can reach conclusions, at present at least, concern- 
ing the resurrection of the body is upon the basis 
of faith in God and especially of faith in Jesus 
Christ. The most we can ask of science at present 
is that it shall not make this faith impossible or 
exceptionally difficult. Certainly it is doing neither 
today. If we do not believe in the resurrection gos- 
pel it is only because for some reason or other we 
are incapable of putting forth the moral energy 
which is essential for a true act of faith. Science 
has made the fact of the resurrection more intelligi- 
ble and more probable from its own viewpoint than 
has been true at any time since the miracle of the 
empty tomb. There is more justification for faith 
in immortality today than at any other period in 
the history of the world. Why then is there per- 
haps less actual faith in the power and reality of 
the life beyond than at any previous time in human 
history? 

The answer to the question is after all not diffi- 
cult to give. Our modern civilization has become 
so engrossed with purely material interests that it 
has ceased to care for spiritual preservation. We 
have discovered so much and have invented so 
many things and have so multiplied our human 
interests that we cannot think of any other type of 


THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION 207 


life as possessing reality of value aside from the 
one which we have ourselves created. We have 
become intoxicated with our own material gran- 
deur, and we have sacrificed the higher life of the 
spirit upon the altar of our crude and crass phys- 
ical reality. As a result of this misdirected inter- 
est, the life of our civilization, as Keyserling puts 
it, is dying out and civilization itself will disap- 
pear unless we change our point of view. It is 
not the creation of material things which has un- 
done us but it is the fact that we have allowed our- 
selves to be mastered and dominated by our own 
creations. We have fashioned a beautiful image 
of stone or marble or steel and have then bowed 
down and worshiped it. We must get back our 
soul or else even the body of our civilization will 
perish. Once we do this we shall again find it easy 
to possess the simple and unhesitating conscious- 
ness of eternal life which characterized the early 
Christian communities. We need to ponder in seri- 
ous fashion the question of our Master, ‘‘What 
shall it profit a man,’’ or we may add, a nation or 
a civilization, ‘‘if he gain the whole world and lose 
his own soul?’’ This exchange our modern age is 
in serious danger of making. We have recreated 
the world from a material point of view, but in the 
process we have almost if not quite lost our soul. 
Life begins and ends for us in this material world. 
It has no larger vista. It is cireumscribed wholly 


208 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


by temporal and spacial conditions. We no longer 
even dream of heaven or paradise. By our own 
confession we have allowed ourselves to commit 
spiritual suicide. 

In the midst of all the confusion and turmoil of 
our modern materialistic civilization we find the 
same uneasiness and unrest which characterized 
the days of the Caesars. Once more the shadow of 
death begins to weary us and our machine-made 
pleasures to pall upon us. In spite of multiplied 
material comforts we are not satisfied but are for- 
ever demanding more. No matter how large our 
incomes may be they are always a little less than 
the amount we would like to spend. As our mate- 
rial wants multiply our spiritual horizon tends to 
shrink. Hence our interest in things spiritual con- 
tinues to decline. In such an atmosphere virtue 
becomes palsied while vice and crime grow strong 
and flourish. When religious people no longer con- 
cern themselves about the world to come the in- 
habitants of the underworld will not think about 
- it. Eternal life means added responsibility for 
present behavior, and no one knows this better 
than the so-called man of the street. What is 
wrong with our present civilization is simply that 
it lacks life. It has mechanism in plenty, but it no 
longer possesses vitality. The spirit has gone out 
of it. 


It is time for the church to recapture the gospel 


THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION 209 


of the resurrection. The ministry must realize its 
significance as the very corner stone of the Chris- 
tian religion. Church leaders must believe it, 
preach it, live it, and manifest it in an age which 
needs it more than any other since the days of the 
Caesars. If it be said that this is hard to do we 
must remember that our Master himself asked the 
question, ‘‘ When the Son of Man cometh, shall he 
find faith upon the earth.’’ Lord Bacon was much 
impressed by this question, and made it the text for 
one of his best known essays. It is, after all, a lack 
of faith which is at the heart of our trouble. The 
difficulties in the way of immortality appear stag- 
gering to us because we have such little faith. We 
ean discern no hope of salvation for our age unless 
it can somehow increase its faith. A recent writer 
tells us that mankind has reacted farther during 
the last two decades in the direction of barbarism 
than at any period since the beginning of the 
Renaissance. Probably this is true. It will require 
a reaction in favor of spiritual things before the 
pendulum can swing in the other direction. Let 
us hope that we are soon to witness the turn of the 
tide. 

But now is Christ risen from the dead, and he- 
come the firstfruits of them that slept. 


REFERENCES 


1. Glover, Paul of Tarsus, later chapters. 
2. Broad, The Mind and Its Place in Nature. 
3. Keyserling, Creative Perception. 


210 HORIZONS OF IMMORTALITY 


. Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars. 
. Tacitus, Annals. 
. Epicurus, Letters. 
Bergson, Creative Evolution. 
. Schiller, Problems of Belief. 
. Tolstoi, My Confession. 
10. Leach, in The Forum, Vol. LXXV, No. 3, The Next Forty 
Years. 


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